Season's Snowflakes
by signelchan
Summary: It's the same old, same old. Another storm of sorts is brewing over the fair city of Ylisstol, except this time, the issues aren't directly caused by someone being trapped somewhere by snowstorm...key word being "directly", of course. It's three days of the holiday season that only the kindness of helping someone out could ruin. [Modern AU]
1. The Unbreakable, Broken

The road was empty, rather lonely for being the only main way to get from Ylisstol to the outlying rural communities, but that could have been attributed to the fact that it was Christmas Eve and everyone who was going somewhere was most likely already there. It also could have been in part to the weather report looming over everyone's heads, a warning made what felt like every year that almost never seemed to come to fruition. Judging by the way the sky was mostly cloud-free on the horizon, it felt like this might have been another year where the reports were going to be proven wrong.

That didn't stop the radio from blaring the warning every few minutes, broadcasters cautioning all listeners to get indoors and stay there, and to be exactly where they needed to be, for when the supposed storm rolled in that night. The language was fear-mongering at worst, overly cautious at best, but out on that open highway it didn't seem possible that there was a snowstorm about to blow in. Of course, that may have been why there was never a report that mentioned the farm towns, the weather out there always being different than what Ylisstol got, and different still from what everything going north towards the mountains received every year.

"You two didn't have to do this for me," the person in the backseat of the truck said, her legs propped up next to her as if she was trying to lay down. "I could have called for my husband to come and retrieve me, he would have been fighting to beat the snowstorm at any rate but he would have made it work." She sounded as tired as she looked, drained from the work she'd been doing earlier that day, but she seemed happy to be in the company of the two people in the front seats. "This is a sacrifice I should not have asked you to make."

"After everything you've done for us in the past few months, it's the least we could do to make it up to you. Besides, even if it starts to snow by the time we're getting back to town, we can manage." Turning to actually look at the woman in the back, rather than looking at her through the rearview mirror, Sully smiled at her, getting a smile back in return. "You know damn well we weren't going to make you stick around and possibly get stranded, Panne, I don't know why you think we'd want to do that."

Her smile fading as she glanced out the window, seeing the clear sky that seemed so much more innocent than she knew it to be, Panne sighed. "You don't think we also have a vehicle capable of winter driving? It isn't the snow I would be worried with out here on the plains, but rather the blizzard conditions we tend to get. You should be able to turn around and make it back with time to spare before this road will be impassable, but if you cannot…"

"Hey, let's not get t'thinkin' in terms like that, okay?" Hitting his hand on top of the steering wheel, which he was holding onto loosely with one hand to just keep them moving in the straight motion they were going, Vaike shook his head at what Panne was saying. "Trust me, I've done some drivin' in some seriously bad conditions, a little blizzard ain't anythin' that scares me. We'll definitely be makin' it home tonight, no questions asked."

"You may change your tune on that when you experience a blizzard like what we get out here for yourself. I am not speaking of snowstorms like they get in Ferox, although I know those are bad and you both can drive your way in and out of them like professionals." One of the corners of Panne's mouth turned upward in a smirk, which the mere sight of made Sully turn back around in her seat, eyes narrowing in confusion. "I'm speaking more of harsh winds and snow blown so hard, so fast, you wouldn't be able to see your hand in front of your face. Makes it quite hard to keep the animals on the farm fed when those blizzards last for days, I'll have you know."

"Maybe we should listen to her," Sully suggested, now looking towards Vaike and seeing how he didn't seem to mind what he was hearing at all. "I mean, she's the one who's got the experience with this sort of thing, we don't need to act like we know what she's talking about if we don't actually know."

He shook his head again, eyes focused on the open road ahead of him. "Snow drivin' has got t'be all the same. If you've made me go up into the Ferox mountains in a snowstorm and we managed t'get out alive, what makes ya think I can't get us out of a blizzard if it happens?"

"The fact that we don't know how bad this could get if we wait it out? Do you really want to tempt fate like that?" She waited to see his response, but when he turned the radio up for another round of the weather report giving its cryptic warning for the entire city but not mentioning anything outside of Ylisstol's borders, she knew he wasn't going to budge on his stance. "Well, fine, see how much I care about all this. You want to drive through a literal hellscape if it comes to it? That decision's on you."

"I'm certain you'll be able to make it back home safe and sound before the blizzard picks up," Panne said, adjusting her legs so they were no longer on the seat next to her, but rather where they should have been to be seated. "After all, for there to be a blizzard, there has to be snow, and for there to be snow we need it to actually start snowing. There's plenty of time to get where you need to be safely."

"See, y'hear that? You're gettin' all testy with me and there ain't even a reason for it!" Laughing, Vaike reached over to grab Sully's leg, but she smacked his hand away before it could get close enough to touch her. That shut him up quickly, surprising him that she'd rejected his advance like she had. "Er, what's the matter? Are ya tellin' me that actually upset ya or somethin'?"

Inhaling deeply, she glared at him as she said, "No, of course not, why else would I not want you touching me? You're not that dense, are you?" She caught him taking his eyes off the road to look at her, an expression of shame in his gaze, but she wasn't letting go of her anger that easily. "You're willing to risk our damn lives to get to prove how much of a man you are by driving in dangerous conditions. You think I'm not going to be mad over that?"

"You've never gotten mad about it before, I guess I ain't seein' what the big deal here is." He shrugged, reaching towards her again and finding his hand slapped once more. "C'mon, Sully, it's just me touchin' your leg. You're normally fine with this when we're drivin' together, lighten up and lemme do it."

In the backseat, Panne brought her hands together in front of her face, clapping her fingers quietly a few times. "I'm getting to bear witness to a marital dispute, this is adorable. Just you wait until you start arguing over small things that aren't so life-impacting like this, you'll find yourselves having a blast with it."

"Sorry, but this isn't the time for your cute comments, we're having a real discussion here about _my_ right to deny him to lay a hand on me and we don't need you giving him ideas that this is okay." There was a harshness to Sully's words that she hadn't expected to come out, making her sound much angrier than she was, and when she looked back and saw that Panne had dropped her hands and was sighing to herself, she felt bad for a moment, before remembering that there were bigger issues to be dealing with. "Anyway, I don't want you touching me right now, you've said some boneheaded things that I think you need to rethink a time or two before you get to touch me again." Giving that a moment to sink in, she then added, "I also want you to think about the damn consequences of your potential actions for once in your life before you say something, anything."

"Consequences, okay, gimme a sec on those." Putting on the most exaggerated thinking face he could manage while driving, Vaike took a few minutes before he said anything else. In the time between his statements, the radio played the warning once more and they drove through a small farm town that seemed to be barren, every home dark and boarded up, something that struck Sully as odd as she saw it. Perhaps it was a precaution for being gone during the winter, or maybe it was because the town was abandoned to begin with, but it seemed strange that no one was around at all. She couldn't let her mind get stuck on that for too long, though, not when she was waiting to hear what Vaike had to say in response to her request, which wasn't nearly as exciting as she thought it would be: "Okay, I think I've got some 'a those consequences you're lookin' for."

"Go on ahead and tell me them, I'm not getting any less angry with you as long as you're not saying anything," she replied, hoping he'd get from this what she was trying to teach him.

He nodded enthusiastically, before shrugging. "I don't really have anythin' at all, I can't come up with anythin' you'd see as a 'consequence'. We get stranded somewhere? Done that before, not a big deal for us. We go off the road? Big deal, this truck can handle it. We're not up in the Feroxi mountains, there ain't anythin' out here that scares me."

Jaw dropping at what she'd just heard, Sully took in a few deep breaths before bringing her hands to the sides of her face, her fingers running at her temples to keep her from lashing out. "I cannot believe you just said that to me. Right here, right now. After the past year we've had, I'd have thought that maybe you'd have gotten some kind of sense in your mind about what matters and what's reckless, but maybe you haven't at all."

"Perhaps the reality of everything still hasn't sank in with him?" Panne offered, before shushing herself again. "I mean, I should not step into your conversation, this is an issue the two of you must work out on your own."

Hearing what both of them had said, Vaike tilted his head side to side as he thought long and hard about what they meant, and it was clear that the realization he was looking for hit him much like a ton of bricks. "I…didn't think about…gods damn it, yeah, me playin' cool guy out in the snow'd really screw that up if somethin' were t'happen." A pause, where he looked into the rearview mirror not at Panne, but at the empty seat beside her, and when his eyes were back on the road he seemed more focused. "I'm not riskin' that, no way. Now can I at least touch ya while drivin' again?"

"You know what? No, not until we're on our way home, safe and sound." His groans of disappointment in her rejection were hard to hear, but Sully knew that she was doing the right thing in her heart by making him wait. It wasn't every day that she told him he couldn't do something, and she had to make use of every chance she got to do it. "Hey, don't whine, I could make you wait until after we're home if you get really greedy."

"Don't ya even dare, I can behave, I promise!" Sounding more like a child being scolded than a grown man, Vaike sputtered out a few more reminders that he could stay in line with what was being asked of him, before shutting up completely and focusing back on driving. "See, look here, I'm just gonna get us to Panne's place and then we can discuss this again there, right? Or are ya gonna put an end to it now?"

She didn't answer, to give him the idea that if he kept talking about it, he'd get nowhere in the discussion. Her next words were aimed at the person in the back seat, who was still sitting silently and had lost her one source of entertainment. "Say, Panne, how far is it from here? We've got to be getting close, you said it's an hour out of town and we have to have been driving for at least that long."

"We're coming up on the turn soon enough, I forgot you've never been the one to come out all this way to my farm." Smiling like she had been earlier, Panne leaned forward until she was brushing up against the back of Sully's seat with her face, so that she could whisper, "Maybe next time it could just be you along for the ride, or at least, you and not him."

"I can hear ya, I hope ya know," Vaike said, wanting to remind her that the very person she was speaking of excluding was driving. "I don't know what you'd wanna do with just Sully out here, but whatever it is, don't think I'm gonna let it happen that easy. Me and her go everywhere together, that one time or two I came out here without her were bad situations that I can't believe ya wanna use against us."

Leaning back, Panne raised an eyebrow in surprise. "I never said I was going to use it against you, but rather I want to give her the same chance you've had to get to see the farm and know a thing or two about the life I and my family live. We won't have the time today to make it happen with you needed to get back into Ylisstol in time to miss the blizzard."

"Don't worry, next time you need a ride back out here I'll be more than willing to provide you one." Sully's answer was genuine, as she was curious about what there might have been that Panne wanted to show her that she wasn't going to get to, but at the same time, she wasn't sure if that time would ever happen. Due to that, she followed up with, "But even if that time doesn't happen, I'm sure I can still find a way to sneak out here to see the farm. You did make it up to the camp this summer with your family while covering shifts, it's the least I can do."

"I'm surprised that you remember that I did that," Panne said with a laugh, her face going back to showing its happy expression she'd been wearing for most of the ride. "That trip was nothing short of a disaster, something I blame almost entirely on those children of mine. The fact that you remember the trip is one thing, but that you don't blame me or them for what went wrong is another."

Blinking a few times, her mind trying to piece together what was being mentioned, Sully was about to ask for some clarification when the truck made an unexpected and fast turn, diving off the main road onto a side, unpaved one. "Er, why would I ever blame you for anything? What happened wasn't anyone's fault, I'm sure, and I wouldn't hold a grudge against someone who's done so much for me."

"One ride gone wrong and it changed lives forever, it surprises me that you don't harbor at least a little hatred for it." Panne leaned forward again, unfazed by the change in road conditions that had them all bouncing around in their seats. "If I were in your shoes, I would never have forgiven who caused that to happen, which was my family, if not necessarily me. But everything turned out okay in the end, so I suppose your complete forgiveness is justified to some extent."

"Can you maybe not talk about that stuff, please?" Vaike asked, not because it was distracting him but rather because he just didn't care for the topic. "It's enough that I've gotta live with the fact that I wasn't there for any 'a that, but t'hear ya talkin' 'bout it so casually is rubbin' me the wrong way. She doesn't hate ya, she doesn't blame ya, leave it at that."

"Right, my apologies for taking this time to talk about it." Now her smile wasn't as genuine as it had been before, but Panne didn't seem bothered by being shut down. She was quick to move on in conversation, her next words a suggestion for what they should do upon approaching the shabby farm house coming up on the horizon. "If you don't mind, backing into the driveway may be easier for getting out, especially if the clouds start rolling in before then. You never want to back out into a cloud bank, and they tend to gather at the end of the driveway before a storm."

That was the last thing said between any of them before pulling up in front of the house, backing into the fenced-off driveway that led to the house that had seen much better days. Even though there was a pressing time crunch to get back home, they all got out of the truck to stretch legs and say goodbyes, but before anyone could get back in to leave the front door to the house opened and three children came running out, followed by an adult holding an infant fourth. Sharing a look between them as the kids swarmed around Panne, excited to see her, neither Sully nor Vaike knew what to do about their current situation. Was it appropriate for them to leave without another word, or did they need to stick around for at least some conversation?

"You two should get on headin' home 'fore that storm rolls through town," the man in the doorway called out at them, bouncing the child in his arms as he spoke. "We've been hearin' the warnin's all day, got scared Panne won't comin' home tonight after all. Kiddos were super worried they'd be spendin' the holidays without their ma around and it's great seein' that she made it back without a hitch."

"Listen to Donnel, he's right about this." Giving them a pleading look, Panne allowed for the oldest of the children to grab her hand and start tugging for her to follow him inside, while the other two grabbed her belongings and were carrying them back inside. "There's always next time, maybe on a day where it's not going to snow, that we can all sit around and catch up with one another."

The look was shared again, this time wordlessly asking if listening to them was worth it. For a moment it seemed as if going right away was going to be the decision made, but at the last second before they went to get back in their seats, that oldest child let go of his mother's hand and ran towards Sully, going to grab her hand. "No, you have to come inside," he said, voice timid as he spoke. "It's just for a minute! Please, follow me!"

"Let go of her, Yarne," Panne yelled after him, seeing what he was about to do. "She needs to get home, she doesn't have the time to talk to you about whatever you want to tell her. Especially if it's about—oh damn it." As she was trying to talk him out of what he was doing, Sully decided to humor the boy and follow him, which in turn led to Vaike following her. "You two do realize that every minute spent here is another minute not home, correct?"

"We have time to get back, it's not like the storm's going to start right away. It's still hours from nightfall and that's when the storm will get bad, like it always does." Sully laughed, keeping pace with the boy leading her into the house. "Besides, the last thing we want to do is be rude to your children. If Yarne has something to show me, I don't want to make him think I'm not interested."

The boy in question was beaming, the words he was hearing nothing less than praise to him. "It's not much, but I've wanted to show you since what happened," he explained, as he led her into the house, Donnel in the doorway stepping aside to let them in. As everyone else filed inside, he was already leading her into the first bedroom from the front door, a cramped space that was clearly tacked onto the house as an afterthought. It was there that he let go of her hand and started digging through a pile of belongings on his bed, her watching to see what kind of surprise he had for her. "I didn't mean to take this when I was at your camp," he explained, as he pulled out a blanket that she recognized as being from the bunks at the horse camp in Ferox. "I just, I got so scared and needed something to hold onto, and it's not mine but…"

"You can keep it, there's plenty of spares." She wasn't sure what had spooked him hard enough to go through with stealing a blanket, but whatever it was, he equated it with her and seemed to want her to know he had it. But then he shoved it at her, pushing it into her hands and refusing to take it back. "Oh, you want me to return it? Seriously kid, there's plenty of these up there, we can handle missing one."

"I don't want you to return it, I just want you to have it when you're driving in the storm today. It got me through a scary time, I think it can do the same for you!" Yarne seemed pleased with himself with his thought process, and Sully was impressed that he was willing to give up something of his for her, but she felt wrong taking it from him when he clearly cared a lot about it. Pushing it back at him, he went wide-eyed at the gesture. "No, I can take it back next time you come here! You have to have it for this!"

She flexed an arm, trying to give the impression that she was stronger than he realized, but the sleeve of her police force jacket ruined any kind of muscle definition she was trying to show off. "Trust me, I think I can handle a little storm on my own. You have it here with you in case the storm gets bad for you, that way you have a piece of my camp and my strength with you."

"Ooh, I didn't think of it that way!" He grabbed the blanket back and wrapped himself up in it, grinning the whole time. "Thanks, miss Sully! You're the best!"

"I hear that every so often, yeah," she replied, dropping her arm but opening up to hug the boy for a moment, blanket and all. "Next summer you're going to have to come back up to visit and ride horses with me again, but we're going to see each other before then, aren't we? You're going to keep that blanket around until we see each other again, and then we can talk about it and maybe put it back where it belongs if you really want to." She pulled her arms back to signal that the hug was over, but he stayed close to her, even as she headed back towards the front door.

Panne was not amused in the slightest that her son had dragged someone inside for the sake of a blanket, but when she saw that she was the only one bothered by it, she let it roll off her shoulders. "Now that this minor distraction has been settled, is it time for the two of you to get on your way? The weather waits for no one, not even off-duty officers."

"I'd say it's time, yeah," Vaike replied, chuckling to himself when he saw the boy reach to cling to Sully but she pushed him off, her job done when it came to seeing what he had for her. "Can't spend all day playin' dangerous, you heard how much a certain someone doesn't like us doin' that anymore."

"Don't pin that one on me, it's not entirely my fault we can't risk being stranded." Nudging him in the ribs in retaliation for what he'd said, Sully looked to Panne with a half-hearted smile. "Until next time then, I suppose?"

She gave a small nod, as she cleared a way for them towards the door. "I'll follow you out, but yes, until next time. Never hesitate to call for me when you need coverage at the station while you're down there, I am more than honored to fill either of your shoes." As they went back outside, she grabbed the baby from Donny's arms, cradling it carefully to her chest while watching her two companions head back to their truck. "Wait a moment, before you do that," she said, stopping them in their tracks. "Come back here, will you?"

There was a moment's hesitation, but both decided that going back wasn't going to harm anything as long as it was another quick distraction. "If you're going to show us the kid, we've already seen her," Sully told her in reminder. "You brought her with you to the camp, which is how I know her, and don't think Vaike didn't come home talking about how you have the cutest damn baby when he had to bring you out here before."

"I know you've both met her, it's nothing strictly to do with her that's caused for me to call you back." Looking down at the babbling girl in her arms, Panne gave a soft laugh, leaning down to nuzzle her nose against the child's. "I've been thinking about the ride out here, and while I know it must be because it was a long ride and you're not sure how well it would have gone over, I wanted to ask if perhaps my unruly children were why we made this journey with just us three."

An answer came immediately to Sully's lips, but she couldn't find the words to give it, so she looked to Vaike in hopes that he would have something correct and smart to say. "Well, uh, I guess we never considered not just doin' this adults-only? It woulda been a much different ride if we hadn't done it this way, I'm sure, but I can't tell ya why we did it this way. Say, d'ya remember why we did?"

"We didn't want to try it, it's too much to handle at once and I don't think either of us would last in a car with a crying baby." Her eyes were fixated on the baby in Panne's arms, but the child in her mind was nowhere near the same as the one she was looking at. "But with all the talk of blizzards and rushing, I think we made the right choice to leave her in someone else's care for a few hours. Has to be a first time to not have one of us with her, you know."

"I'm not saying that's wrong, but…" Panne shook her head, turning how she was standing so that Sully couldn't stare at her baby any longer. "I shouldn't have asked about it, I am doing nothing but holding you up longer. Go on, get home and give your darling girl a kiss on the head for me when you see her!"

"I think one or both 'a us can manage that for ya," Vaike said, giving her a small wave before jumping into the driver's seat of the truck. He was working on starting it as Sully slowly got in as well, her movements a lot slower as she tried resisting to get back to staring at that baby. As she closed her door, she sighed, which led him to stop messing with the ignition for a moment to look at her. "Hey, what's got ya down right now? This ain't normally how ya are, I'm gettin' a bit worried 'bout you."

"Nothing's got me down, I'm just thinking about some stuff." She paused, expecting him to question further, but he merely went back to starting the truck, the engine groaning as it came back to life. "I can't help but wonder if Panne asked that question for a reason. Do you think she thinks we're bad parents for—"

"I'm gonna go ahead and stop ya right there, there's no way she'd think such a thing 'bout us. She's not the kind 'a person t'hide what they're thinkin', so if she did think it she'd have said it by now." Stepping on the pedal slowly, to get the truck moving, Vaike looked over at Sully again, seeing that she was still deep in thought. "Just don't worry 'bout it, there ain't anythin' wrong between her and us."

Deep inside, she knew he was right, but there was a part of her mind that was telling her to keep arguing, to keep trying to point him to the possible reality that he was wrong after all. "I guess she'd know better than us, seeing as she's got four kids to our one, she has to know everything about the proper age to leave them alone with a babysitter for a few hours. Do you think she's ever actually done that with any of those kids?"

"Stop worryin', seriously. You're just stressin' yourself out over this, it's not even worth it. We're gonna be home soon enough, then you can know we did the right thing and didn't do anythin' we'd regret." They were rolling down the driveway, the truck seemingly unable to pick up any speed, and as they reached the end he went to pull out and get back on the road, only for the truck to slow down until it wasn't moving any further. Having just said they'd be home soon, the lack of movement concerned Vaike, and after trying to get the truck moving again a few times he opened his door and jumped out, leaving the truck running but still not moving. "You stay inside and watch, this should take me just a moment and then we'll be goin'."

"I don't think so," she replied, unbuckling herself so she could climb out and accompany him as he looked at what might have been wrong. "You know this, I'm just as good at fixing things as you are, my gender be damned. Don't expect me to just sit around and do nothing while you save the day."

"Fine, if you're gonna be that way, you can go ahead and push the truck t'see if it'll get movin' that way, I'll sit inside and listen t'hear if it starts runnin' right." Grinning at her, as if he'd just tricked her into doing something she hadn't wanted to do, Vaike motioned towards the back of the truck, miming pushing it with his hands. "Go ahead, you're the one who decided ya wanted t'do what I was doin', rather than what I told ya t'do."

Lips pursing together as she realized how she'd been used, Sully accepted that she had indeed chosen to ignore what he'd said because she thought he was putting her aside for an irrelevant reason, but she refused to do what was now being asked of her. "No way, I know you well enough to know you'll drive off without me and make me chase you down if it starts because of me pushing it. I'll do the watching, you do the pushing."

She headed back to her side of the truck, hearing him teasingly call after her that she shouldn't have gotten out to begin with. There was room for retorting, and she was filled with ideas for it, but she ignored what he was doing and got back in her seat, slamming her door closed with more force than needed; even though she was supposed to be listening for the engine roaring back to life so they could get on their way, she couldn't help but slink down in her seat and bury her face in her hands, dwelling on all the thoughts that were occupying her mind.

Exactly a year ago, they'd been at the station Christmas party, hanging out with their friends and co-workers and tying off loose ends in terms of bad relationships, as well as striking a new chapter down in their own romance. Even with her hands covering her face, she could make out exactly where the ring on her finger was, its cool metal pressing against the bridge of her nose as she held her hands in place. It was the same ring she was given that night, something she treasured arguably more than the second ring she'd received not even a week after that, simply because it wasn't nearly as covered in gems and looked a lot nicer when it reflected light off her hand.

It was that night, a year before, that things had changed in their lives forever, after years of being cagey about how they felt and after finally accepting that they were meant for each other. And it was the year following that night that added onto those changes, piling more and more on until it was obvious that their lives weren't anything close to how they were the year before, and they would never be close to the same again. If this were any other year, a little bit of vehicle trouble and a looming chance of being stranded somewhere wouldn't have felt so daunting and concerning, and the fear that they weren't going to make it home was starting to chew deep at her soul.

They had to make it back, they needed to get into Ylisstol before the snowstorm started and before the blizzard picked up on the road back. They weren't going to that party at the station this year—it was a decision they'd made long before knowing they were driving anyone home that day, and even then, driving Panne out to her farm didn't have any impact on their ability to go. If they wanted to go to the party, there was still plenty of time for them to make it back and be able to get ready to go before it got into full swing. It was just that neither of them wanted to go, finding that there was somewhere much more important they needed to spend the night and it didn't involve any officers but themselves.

The thought of _where_ that was made Sully drop her hands, looking around to see if anything had changed about where she was sitting. The lack of hum of the engine was still present, and she was still the only one in the truck at the moment, which meant that little to no progress had been made so far. "Oh come on, you can't be serious that we're still here," she grumbled, going to open her door again before it came opened on its own, Vaike standing outside looking at her with distressed eyes and his mouth tightly shut. "What's the matter, mister 'this'll take just a moment'? Something not working right?"

"Just get out and look at this for yourself, I don't wanna say it's bad but…" The way his voice trailed off after his mumbling was easily one of the most concerning things she'd heard in a while, but even still it was overshadowed by some of the thoughts still lodged in her mind. He motioned for her to follow him, and after she got back out of her seat and was solidly on the ground he was leading her around to the front of the truck, where normally there'd be a loud noise letting them know that it was running properly. "I don't know what's happened to it, it's never done this t'us before, y'know," he said, bringing his hand over his mouth half in shock and half in thought, as he reached to put a reassuring hand on Sully's shoulder. "It's almost like it decided that today, of all the days, it wants t'break down on us."

"You're…kidding, right?" One of her hands resting on his, and the other finding itself getting entangled in her hair, she looked at the front of the truck, the vehicle that had stuck with them through so many sticky situations, in complete disbelief. "It's seriously going to choose to break down here? Today? We need to get home, we have to find a way to get this damn thing working, and fast!"

"I have an idea for how we're gonna manage that. We just haveta hope that Panne or Donny can bail us outta this one." It wasn't every day that their issues had someone else at a reasonable distance away from where they were; normally when something bad befell them they were hours away from the nearest person they knew, or the nearest place that could provide them what they needed. Without warning, Vaike yanked his hand off of Sully's shoulder and, after making sure he had his keys out of the truck and that the thing was shut off completely, was running back towards the house, yelling the whole way to try and get someone inside to pay attention to him,

She was following, although not as fast and without yelling as he was. There was something about watching him, in most of his police uniform as if he'd just left work before coming out here (which he hadn't, he'd worked overnight and had come home and promptly fell asleep in his uniform, never bothering to change), that made her feel like she was about to watch him raid someone's house for the sake of the job. That wasn't something she'd ever watched him do before, nor was it something she'd ever had to do herself, but it was one of those things they'd talked about being stuck doing together and for a moment it felt like that was exactly what they were doing, especially when she remembered that she too was wearing her uniform pants and jacket. They were just off-duty officers doing things in uniform, even though they weren't doing anything work-related in the slightest, and if anyone who wasn't aware of who they were saw them approaching this house in moderate levels of panic they would probably assume some big raid was about to happen.

Instead, the only witnesses were a few kids and two adults who were entirely aware of who the officers coming towards their door were. "I thought we told you to leave fifteen minutes ago," Panne said to them once they were at the front door, Vaike out of breath and unable to respond and Sully caught up in her thoughts to the point that she hadn't actually heard what was said, time-wise. "What's stopped you from leaving? Don't you want to get home to that dear child of yours and spend the holidays with her?"

While she hadn't heard how long they'd been wasting trying to get to leave, Sully definitely did hear Panne's second comment, and her heartbeat picked up at the thought. "We do want to get home to her, I promise we're not dragging our feet on this intentionally, it's just that the truck won't move and—"

"Somethin' happened t'the truck and it's not runnin' right, can't get it out of the driveway and that means we can't get home." He hadn't meant to cut Sully off in her explanation, but Vaike was able to say what was wrong a lot faster than she would have been able to. "By chance, would any of ya here know how t'fix a truck real quick?"

Her eyes flitting around for a moment as she thought, Panne ultimately shook her head in denial. "We always call on the neighbors to assist us when we have mechanical issues, and very few, if any, of them are in town right now. The least I can do is offer up our vehicle for your use, but if you said the truck is at the end of the driveway, by the time we move it out of the way to allow for the other car to get out, it may be too late to get far without finding yourselves stranded in the blizzard."

"But it's worth a shot, right?" Coming up behind her, having heard the conversation, Donny gave everyone there a large, eager smile. "I ain't gonna let anyone kind like you folks have t'sit around stuck out in the farmland when you've got places t'be! C'mon, let's get that truck 'a yours back up here so we can try gettin' y'all outta here!" He seemed to be far too excited to get to help out, but it was understandable, given that the people he was helping had just been helping him out. He wanted to share the kindness as much as he could, and if that meant running down to the end of the driveway with them to push the truck back up to the house, that was what he was going to do.

It only took close to an hour to get it all the way back, having to stop a few times because of children getting underfoot, one of those times involving the kid very nearly getting hit by the truck as he tried to run behind it. He came out unscathed, if a bit shaken by the experience, and he made sure to watch the work from his mother's side for the rest of the time they were moving the truck. Once it was back at the top of the long driveway, and the other car was maneuvered out around it so it could be used, a decision had to be made: was it worth risking getting stuck in the blizzard to drive home right then?

On one hand, if they were able to out-speed the storm, it meant they'd be home just a little later than they'd expected to be, but on the other, if they weren't able to, that meant sleeping in a car that wasn't their own, on the side of a lonely highway back into town, for however long it took for the storm to pass. There was enough reward to take the risk, but was the risk too great to want to chance it, that was the question that needed to be answered.

They were leaning towards going for it when the first snowflakes began to drift into view. "I didn't think it would start snowing here until later," Panne remarked, looking up at the still-clear sky overhead and realizing what that meant. "That would be because it isn't snowing here yet. I can't imagine that the road's passable once you get back to the highway, I think staying here's in your best interest."

"No, we have to get home, it can't be that bad out there already." Also looking to the sky and noticing the same cloudless blue that Panne had seen, Sully's eyes shifted towards the horizon, where the clouds were rolling in, and fast. She grit her teeth, knowing what those clouds meant and knowing that if they tried racing them, they'd meet them halfway back to Ylisstol and be stranded there until the storm passed. There was no choice but to stay at the farm until the blizzard rolled by them, but there was no definite answer on how long that might have been. "Come on, really? We have to get back into town!"

"With how fast it's moving, it may just last through the morning, and then you can be on your way back home. I know it's going to be hard to accept this, but you have to just let it be." Sounding as comforting as she could, Panne opened the front door to the house and directed the children inside, before looking at Sully and telling her, "Come inside when you're ready, I'll get a place set up for the two of you to sleep tonight."

"But we're not…we can't…" Throwing her head back and letting loose a bellowing cry, Sully waited several moments before collecting herself and focusing on the two guys out by the truck, fiddling with something under its hood. She took in a deep breath before closing her eyes, the image of them standing there burned into her memory until she reopened her eyes. They were still there, in the same positions, but in the time she'd not been looking the snow blowing in had picked up just slightly, visible snowflakes moving through the air carried entirely by the wind. Panne was right, staying there was for the best, but damn she did not want to have to accept that as fact until there really was no other option.

As she watched the two men try to get something working, the wind-carried snow picking up in intensity by the second, she could see them getting colder, followed by the closing of the truck's hood and them coming to the door where she was standing. "Thing's finally given out on us. Amazin' that it didn't happen before now, but wish it coulda waited until we were back in town to do it." Hanging his head in defeat, Vaike was taken by surprise when Sully grabbed him and pulled him in closer to her. "Uh, what's all this about? Somethin' wrong, besides the obvious?"

"We are stuck out here, in the middle of farmland nowhere, on Christmas Eve, and you want to ask me if something's wrong?" She had missed his tacked-on obvious statement, judging by how upset she was at his question. "We're not going to make it home today, we're not going to get to spend tonight and tomorrow with _our_ child, yet you don't seem to see there's an issue here and want to ask me what's wrong."

"I know that's wrong, I was askin' if there was anythin' else. Gods, calm down for a moment and stop lashin' out at me over this, it wasn't me who offered t'drive her home today." He was let go of for that statement, Sully turning forcefully on her heels and going inside without another word, leaving him outside in the snow with Donny, who looked like he felt awkward to have been present for that. "Sorry that y'had t'hear that one, she's got a bit of a temper on her sometimes."

Donny shrugged, heading to the door for himself. "Can't complain 'bout it, she ain't nothin' compared to my Panne when she gets all riled up. 'sides, it seems like y'all have a lot you're missin' out on by bein' stuck here, can't blame a woman for gettin' upset 'bout nothin' in that situation, no sir."

Nodding sagely, in complete understanding and agreement with what had been said, Vaike followed him in and made sure the door was tightly closed behind him, as he was the last person out in the coming storm that needed to come back in. The scene in the house was a lot different than how it had been when they'd come in for that momentary distraction, with the kids and Panne all carrying things to rearrange rooms for the moment. "I hope you don't mind too much that the best we can do is give you two beds in the same room," she said, arms filled with toys that she was moving. "The only double bed in the house is ours, and I don't think you would be interested in sleeping in that room."

"I think we'll be able t'handle it, thanks for at least givin' us that much." In all honesty, Vaike had expected to come inside to see that they were going to be sleeping on couches, so any type of bed was better than that. It was then that he actually looked around and saw that Sully was not amongst everyone in there, which was strange to him. "Say, any idea where that darlin' wife of mine got off to? She didn't go back outside, did she?"

"She said that she needed to place a phone call, so I told her to step into my bedroom to do so, for privacy." Panne motioned her head to one of the many doors branching off the main room. "Did you…not hear her ask that when you were coming in?"

"I must not've, sorry 'bout that. Mind if I go find her and make sure everythin' is fine?" He knew it wasn't going to be fine, he knew that finding her was going to allow for her to take out all her conflicted emotions about the situation on him, but it was better that she had the chance to vent than it was for her to bottle all those feelings inside. When Panne told him that he could, he gave her thanks before heading towards that bedroom door, opening it with ease but finding the door itself only able to open a few inches. "Sully, you in here still?" he asked, unable to poke his head in to look around for himself.

The response he received was the light in the room turning on, followed by a quick cough. "Yeah, I'm in here, what's going on? Storm pass over already? Are we going home after all?"

"No, none 'a that, sadly. Lemme in so we can talk, will ya?" She obliged, moving out from behind the door so he could open it enough to squeeze inside, and once he was in it was closed once more. There in that bedroom that wasn't their own, in a house far from where they were supposed to be, it almost felt like older days when they'd been trapped in a similar situation, and he was about to comment on the similarities when he saw her anxiously glancing towards her phone. It all clicked as to what she'd been doing, who she'd been calling, and his face fell at the reality. "You had t'let someone back home know we weren't makin' it tonight, didn't you?"

"There wasn't a choice, if we're not leaving then I can't leave them hanging on where we might be. The hell kind of monster do you take me for?" There were obvious tearstains on her cheeks, which she caught him looking at and glared at him for noticing, although when he reached to try drying them off himself she wasn't nearly as angry about it. "It just seems that we can't do anything nice for anyone without something bad happening to us as a result. This time's just…worse than any of the others. And I didn't even get an answer when I called, told me the line was busy. Some babysitter we picked, huh?"

Ignoring her last sentences, he tried to lighten up the mood in whatever way he could. "We're not gonna die and we'll make it home in time t'celebrate the holidays with her, don't worry." He was pulling her closer to him, even though she'd gone back to looking at her phone's screen, waiting for some kind of response to something she hadn't bothered telling him about. It wasn't the most opportune time for them to be holding one another, but each other was all they had in that moment, and they needed to hold onto what they had with them there on the farm.

The kiss they shared was complemented with the sounds of her phone going off, someone sending their response to whatever question she'd posed, but it wasn't until after they'd broken apart that either of them knew that was what it was. But in that moment where they'd been kissing, everything bad had faded from their minds as long as their lips were on each other, a reminder of all the good things the past year had given them.

It was just that the message received was a reminder of all the bad things.

* * *

 **A/N: _okay_ so, welcome to my NaNo 2k17 project, otherwise known as "the remnants of what was the original SDN plot"**

 **wait what, how could this be the remnants of that plot? aren't they, like, two very different stories? yes! SDN was originally going to take place four and a half years after Snowed In, rather than three and a half years, and was going to be the end of summer, not the beginning of it. but I decided to change up that plot to focus on something more interesting (like...gun fights in stairwells). and guess what! this story still doesn't focus on the original SDN plot! but it's here, oh goodness it's here.**

 **see you in a few days when I post more of the same old, same old c:**


	2. Be Careful Who to Trust

Pacing around her living room, Maribelle's eyes kept shifting to the large, ornamental clock resting on one of the walls, counting down the minutes until she was reasonably to be expecting someone to show up at her door. She was waiting rather impatiently for the knocking, so that she could rush over, tell them it was unlocked, and get done with the task she'd volunteered herself for because she thought she could handle it. "I never thought watching an infant would be so difficult," she grumbled, looking down from the clock to the sleeping baby in her arms, a child that she knew would start crying the moment she stopped walking around. "This is the last time I choose to do something nice for someone without being given warnings for it!"

The door opened then, catching her by surprise as she'd so perfectly rehearsed what she was going to do when someone showed up. But it was merely Frederick coming back into the house, looking stressed but otherwise no different than normal. "Those two should have a fun night, it sounds like there's going to be a lovely get-together over at Chrom's house for the children. Robin mentioned that his girls will be there later, or so I've heard, and that would bring the total count there up to seven children for Lissa to keep an eye on."

"I'm sure those seven will be much, much easier to care for than this one here," Maribelle replied, gesturing the best she could do the baby in her arms. "Oh goodness I hope her parents make it here soon, unlike them I do have somewhere I would like to be tonight, and it's not here cradling their pride and joy all evening."

"It's not quite the time they said they would be back, have patience, Maribelle. You try driving out of town and back with a storm looming over the city, you'd find it much more difficult than expected." Frederick went to head into a different room, but he stopped walking as he passed by Maribelle, who had stopped pacing and was now shifting side-to-side in one spot. "Gods, it's really taking me back to see you with such a young child in this house, especially one that doesn't cry at the sight of you."

"Don't remind me that my godson refused to let me be in his vision without his mother present until earlier this year. He robbed me of so many precious moments because of his pickiness." Still shifting to keep some sort of movement to appease the sleeping child, Maribelle looked at Frederick with shining eyes as he stared back at her almost in awe at what she was doing. "As fast as it all came on, I'm glad I get to have a second chance at pretending to be a distant relative to a child, even if she's a bit much to handle."

"Yes, well, she's still got time to earn her rebellious streak from either of her parents, she's just milking up the attention while she can. You know for a fact that the moment she can do things on her own, she'll be left to fend for herself." Frederick sounded serious with what he said, and it made Maribelle gasp, looking down at the child once more. This precious little thing wasn't ever going to be expected to do things for herself, especially not at a young age; if her parents tried to force her to do something, well, she was just going to have to step in on this child's behalf and put a stop to it! "I'll be upstairs tidying the boys' rooms until she gets picked up, then we can get ready to leave. Sound like a plan?"

"You and your tidying up, yes it sounds like a plan. They should be here soon enough, you have plenty of time to make real progress on those rooms." Smiling at her husband until he left, Maribelle shook her head the moment he was gone. "I have no idea why he'd say such horrible things about you, you'll be your parents' princess for life. They'll never expect anything of you that they wouldn't do themselves, which…" She trailed off as she realized that there were quite a few things that were included in that statement that would also factor into what Frederick had said. "…forget I brought that up. Your parents' princess, forever you'll be, and that's a fact."

The baby was still sleeping, and seemed to be rather deep in her slumber, so Maribelle slowly brought herself to stop moving, so that she could focus entirely on the girl, but the moment all movement stopped the girl's pale eyes opened up. In shock, Maribelle went right back to moving around the room, but the damage was already done, and the girl opened her mouth almost as if she was about to start crying her typical shrill scream, but all she did was tiredly yawn. "Oh, that was a close one," Maribelle said, sighing in relief but not stopping her new wave of moving. "I don't think my heart can handle hearing you screaming again."

There was the sound of a soft vibration somewhere in the house, which Maribelle attributed to something going on upstairs because it sounded too much like a toy than anything else. Her suspicion was proven correct moments later, when she heard Frederick cursing at something he'd found in whichever room it was he was cleaning, and she chuckled to herself at his distress. The baby in her arms, hearing the laugh, lit up like she was about to start babbling or something, but as quickly as her eyes had gone wide they were already closing back up so she could return to sleep. "That's my girl, sleep some more so you're fully awake when your parents come by to get you. I'm sure they'll love having you scream at them the whole night because you slept all day for me."

She was looking back towards the clock, counting how many minutes until the expected time she'd be freed from this babysitting job. It hadn't been that many since she last looked, and while that was disheartening, as long as the minutes passed without the baby crying she couldn't really complain. This was almost like when she'd been raising babies of her own, except then she'd had an assistant with her at all times and she had been blessed with two big, strong boys who cried often but didn't scream like this child did.

At least the screams were proof that she had a decent set of lungs on her, she thought, and that was a lot given the circumstances surrounding her birth. That wasn't a story Maribelle knew much about, though, and she wasn't going to speculate on what may or may not have happened that early fall day, because all that she knew for certain was that this adorable child came of it. This adorable child that hadn't ever been in the care of someone that wasn't one of her parents or a trained medical professional until earlier that day, and for never having been separated from both her parents before she was handling it like a champ. Or, at least, as much of a champ as an infant could handle something.

Deciding that she'd had enough of the movement, Maribelle chose to instead take a seat in the oft-forgotten rocking chair in the corner of the room, hoping the motion from rocking it would be comparable enough to actually moving around. But the moment she sat down, she felt how tired she was catch up with her, and she had to stifle a yawn as she started rocking the seat back and forth. "Perhaps it would be best if your parents didn't rush back after all, them taking their time would save them from any chance of danger there might be on the roads right now, with that storm looming over us all," she said, before yawning for real. "But at the same time, them rushing back would allow for me to get some rest before the party tonight, at this rate I have no idea how I'll stay awake for it and for what's coming after!"

She was talking to a baby that had no way of responding to her, especially since she was asleep, so she nodded along with her own words and came up with an answer to her own issue. "I suppose there's no harm in taking a quick nap with you, now that I think about it. With Frederick home, if someone tries coming inside he can grant them entry, and that means me being awake isn't entirely necessary." She closed her eyes for a moment, before they shot back open and she looked down at the girl again. "Or maybe I should remain resilient and stay awake. What was the warning, if I'm not paying close enough attention, you might just stop breathing? Typical first-time parents, scared that something will happen to their child that's completely irrational."

After yawning once more, she gave the clock a final look before settling down in the chair, bouncing it with her foot still but focusing more on taking a quick nap than maintaining the movement. If she drifted off, it must not have been for too long, but she figured that she would be woken up by either crying or a pair of parents confused as to why the babysitter was sleeping on the job; when she felt the chair being jerked underneath her and she woke back up, it was Frederick standing over her, not anyone else. "Maribelle, do you have any idea how late it is?" he asked her, to which she shook her head. "It's been over an hour since I came home and you're still babysitting. Have you tried contacting them? I know that it's only in case of emergencies that—"

"Shut it, don't talk about emergencies and referring to her parents in the same breath, she might be a baby but she can totally understand what you're saying." Maribelle was lying with that, but she didn't want to hear the possibility that was being presented. "And no, I don't have my phone on me because I didn't want it ringing and scaring her awake, it should be in the kitchen. I was using it as a timer when I was warming a bottle for her earlier."

A bottle, the necessity of eating, and the fact that it'd been a good handful of hours since the child last ate were thoughts that hit Maribelle all at once, and while Frederick backed away to go search for her phone for her she was tempted to call after him to get something started so that she could feed the girl if needed. She chose not to, though, when she saw that the baby wasn't fussy at all, and was in fact still asleep. "I don't know how you're still sleeping but I hope you stay this way until your parents make it back, if they make it back."

As she spoke, the girl seemed to know that she was being begged to keep sleeping as she slowly woke up, lips quavering as she was about to start crying. Jumping to her feet as best as she could without disturbing her too much, Maribelle followed after her husband, meeting him when he turned around with her phone in hand. "You don't seem to have any missed calls yet, which is strange, don't you think? I never pegged either of them as being an irresponsible parent who would just abandon their child somewhere. Then again, I never pegged either of them as wanting to be a parent."

"Do you want me to call and see what's up, or do you want to continue saying mean things about people in front of their child?" Maribelle knew she was about to do something rude, but if Frederick expected her to be the one doing things, he needed to do something for her in return. As he offered up her phone, she offered up the whimpering child, which he looked at her for with disdain. "Hey, I can't call and hold her at the same time. You work your baby-calming magic on her while I call her mom, okay?"

"I assume that means you want me to feed her," he said with a dejected sigh, but she didn't answer him because she was already working to place a necessary phone call. It rang once before going to voicemail, which was more concerning than never ringing at all would have been. Thinking her call had been accidentally rejected, Maribelle tried again with the same result, which was puzzling to her.

If calls weren't going to work, she was going to have to resort to sending messages, because leaving a voicemail would ultimately end in a loop of them barely missing one another with their calls. "I get that it's their first time out without her, but I'd think they'd be super on top of making sure they know exactly what's going on," she muttered, as she began typing up a message as it came to her.

It took a few minutes for her to properly word everything she wanted to include, and her message started with the requisite "I don't know what's going on" that she felt the situation required, but sending that message filled her with a sense of dread that the two attempted calls had kicked up. "I hope she replies, and fast, I don't think I can handle being in charge of her baby all night if I have to be. I've got places to go tonight, things to do, I've already shipped my own children off for the evening and I didn't ask to be given a new one to care for as well."

As the minutes ticked by post-message, the dread only grew into a worry that something bad had happened on what should have been an easy trip to and back from a farm not that far from town. She was pacing again, not because she needed to in an attempt to keep a child asleep, but because she was beginning to worry herself sick; this was not going to have a happy ending if she didn't get any answers soon. In the kitchen, she could hear Frederick talking to himself (or to the baby) about what he thought was going on, and she was trying not to listen in on him in case he was just venting.

What she heard, though, was cause to be even more concerned, and Maribelle knew deep down that what she was hearing was all her fault to begin with. That was moved past, though, when she realized that what was being said was something a child, of any age, should never have been hearing. "You know, as great of a guy as your father is, he's never come off as the type of man to be responsible enough to have a child. There are some things that happened to him simply because of that perception, and may the gods keep you from ever learning about those things."

"Frederick! What is it with you and saying things you shouldn't be?" Storming into the kitchen to see him leaning against the counter, the baby cradled in one arm with his other hand holding up her bottle, Maribelle narrowed her eyes into a deep glare at him. "Seriously, treat her like you'd treat either of the boys. I'd never catch you saying mean things about me to one of them, so what makes you think that you can say mean things about her father to her? She's a baby, I get it, but you need to be nice!"

"I am being quite nice, I could be more outright with what I am saying." He shrugged one shoulder at her anger, looking back at the baby to see how content she looked with her eating. "Her being a baby allows for me to say those things without worry that she'll remember them. I promise that'll be the only time I mention her father's ineptitude to her, but I cannot say the same for everyone else."

She gasped, bringing a hand to her chest to clutch at her heart. "No one should be saying anything mean about him to her! Hell, no one should say anything mean to her, period, but if they do it shouldn't be about either of her parents!" Maribelle may have been a lot of things, and a judgmental woman was one of them, but she was a mother above everything else and although this child wasn't hers (and was the result of a relationship she'd indirectly been responsible for ever sparking), she was in her care for the moment and therefore was like a third child in her household. "I want you to apologize, right now."

"Apologize? For what, might I ask?" Frederick looked like he was genuinely unsure of what Maribelle wanted him to say, and for a moment, she wasn't sure either. But then she looked at the child he was holding, seeing her absolutely fair wisps of hair on the top of her head and the slivers of pale eyes that she'd heard were getting darker by the day, and all she could see was a combination of the girl's parents looking back at her. In that moment, where she was trying to put together what she wanted that apology to sound like, she didn't see just that baby there in the room: she saw two close friends of hers in there as well, looking expectantly towards her for what she had to say.

Shaking her head to clear her vision of that illusion, Maribelle replied, "I want you to apologize for slandering dear Vaike's name in the presence of his child. And then I want you to apologize for—" Whatever was to come next was stopped when her phone started ringing, notifying her of a call. "—oh, just apologize for talking bad about him! I have to take this!"

She was running out of the kitchen as she hit to answer the call, bringing the phone to her ear to hear what was going to be said immediately after picking up. "I hope you don't think we're intentionally not there to get Kjelle, because we're not. And you would know this already if you'd have just answered your phone when I tried calling." Sully's voice on the other side sounded cold, but at the same time, there was a warmth to it that Maribelle picked up on, a motherly vibe that showed concern. "You haven't killed her or something like that, have you?"

"I never got a call from you, so sorry that I didn't answer what I didn't get," she replied, realizing that they must have been calling each other at the exact same time, causing nothing but missed connections. "But never mind that, did you really just ask if I'd killed your child? I wouldn't have volunteered to be the first to watch her if I intended on doing such a harmful thing! She's a lovely baby, cries a bunch and hates being still, but I've managed to keep her fairly content today. When will you be by to get her?"

There was a silence on the other end, followed by what sounded like a scream from an older child in the background. Maribelle could have placed the child's age as being older than her boys, but not by more than a couple years, and she wasn't sure where Sully would have found a kid that age to be in the same place as. Before she could question about that, she was given an explanation for the lack of arriving to pick the baby up. "It's a long story, but the short version is that we're not going to be by today. There's no way we can get there, we're stuck out where we were taking Panne home and the storm's blown in out here and we lost use of the damn truck and everything's a mess."

Maribelle froze as she heard those words, as she heard the almost desperation in Sully's voice as she explained what was taking her so long. "I…understand, that's horrible. And there's no way you can get back into town?"

"There is, but we'd be risking our lives to do it. I said the storm's blown in, didn't I? Last I checked it wasn't snowing here but there's definitely snow _out_ there, since I guess what they get in these parts are huge blizzards." Hearing that made Maribelle want to check outside for herself to see if the snow had started in town, but she had to stop herself because she was certain she would lose her mind if there was. "We'll be back as soon as we can be, Panne and her husband are going to let us use their car to get home, but the damn snow's got to stop blowing around before we can get out."

"So let me set everything straight, you two are stuck out there for who knows how long? But you do have a way back when the time comes?" That was how things sounded to Maribelle, and she was glad to hear that she was understanding everything correctly; however, there was a drastic difference between understanding it and accepting it. "I refuse to believe you have allowed for this to happen! What happened to 'oh it's just a snowstorm, I can drive through it with my big, scary vehicle', and why aren't you thinking like that?"

On the other end of the phone, Sully had to pull away for a second to compose herself, the mocking and mimicking tone Maribelle had taken on almost enough to make her laugh in such a tense moment. "Trust me, it was almost impossible to shake off thinking like that. Hell, up until I got insistent we couldn't think like that anymore, that was the exact kind of stuff Vaike was suggesting. But we can't risk our lives right now, and I hope you can figure out why that might be."

"I can figure it out, but you're telling me something that no parent would ever willingly say. Do you not remember what happened to me on my dear Brady's first Christmas? Where I got separated from him?" It was a memory that she didn't care to call back on, as it was attached to some less than appropriate activities as well as some behaviors she was still ashamed of years later. "Come on, I know we spoke many times that week because of where you were."

"If you're assuming we're going to get drastic like you did for missing something so important, I'm sorry but you're dead wrong. She'll have the same experience this holiday season, whether it's with us or with you and your family, and since we just can't get home right now you're going to have to fill in for us." There was that desperation again, the words Sully was saying clearly not what she wanted to have to be saying in that moment. It was heartbreaking to hear, but if anyone was to have to hear it, someone who'd also been faced with not spending their child's first Christmas with them was easily the best option.

There was just one small issue about this being thrust onto her so suddenly, and Maribelle was doing all she could to not bring it to light. She finished up the conversation with the same amount of care that she'd had since the start, being willing to assist with watching the baby as long as needed because safety was more important than anything else, but the moment the line went dead she let out a long, distressed scream. "I had _plans_ for tonight that didn't include any children at all in them! I can't take a baby to the station party, it's strictly no kids as always!"

It was a moment of metaphorically banging her head against the wall to try and figure out a plan that had her come to a realization: she could always bail out of the party, stay at home all night with the baby, and get over the fact that she'd wasted one of her few childless nights of the year doing something nice for someone else. There was always a need for her to be kinder to others, this was one instance where she could do it because someone really needed her to step in and be helpful. "Maribelle, is everything okay?" Frederick called out, having heard her scream. "What happened? Please tell me you're unharmed."

"I'm fine," she replied, heading back towards the kitchen where he was still standing, a now-sleeping child in his arm that he was looking over to watch his wife as she came in. That changed when she started pointing at said child, aggression in every motion. "It's just that someone's parents aren't coming to get her, and now she's my responsibility until they can manage to get here."

"Until they manage to get here? Have they prioritized something over the well-being of their daughter? You know, I was saying that—" He was shushed by her miming zipping her lips, which he did without trying to get another word in. There wasn't a single interruption as she laid out the entire story as she'd learned it, that the storm had rolled out over the farmlands outside of town and that an unusable truck had forced them to stay out where they were until conditions cleared up. But when she was done, he was looking from her to the baby with concern in his eyes. "This means that, unless Naga provides a miracle overnight, they won't get to see her tomorrow."

"I am completely aware of that, don't worry, and so are they. Something tells me that they won't get as drastic about it as we did, but that's neither here nor there." Giving a few awkward coughs to show she wasn't dwelling on that fact any longer, she continued with, "By chance, do you happen to see the big, huge issue here? One that doesn't involve the fact that a pair of new parents aren't getting to spend their baby's first Christmas with her?"

Frederick hesitated in answering, spending his time looking at the sleeping baby rather than coming up with a response to Maribelle. It wasn't until she prodded him about it further that he gave in to giving an answer. "If it's that we don't have the tools to provide her a decent holiday with us, I fail to see that as an issue. We shouldn't be quick to assume that they would have anything more for her than we do."

Slamming her hands together forcefully, bringing her fingers to her lips, Maribelle sighed. "I don't know why you want to think they're such bad parents, but I'm willing to guess your closeness to someone who doesn't particularly care for any of them might have a bit to do with it. Can you look at this in an unbiased way, for me?"

"I suppose I can, if only for you. Now what would you consider an issue here that is nothing to do with their specific situation, hm?" He was still looking at the child, watching her take in soft breaths as she slept, such a tiny life in his care. It was that, the thought of caring for her, that got the ball rolling, and soon his eyes were locking with Maribelle's, seeing the light of excitement that he'd figured things out come to life in her eyes. "Unless I'm mistaken, this is about what we're supposed to be doing tonight, isn't it?"

"It sure is. What do we do about that? I don't want to not go, we've been looking forward to this for weeks now! I was expecting to be getting ready for it right now, but instead we're standing around debating what to do with a child that isn't ours!" Separating her hands, Maribelle pulled one of her long ringlets over her shoulder and started running her fingers through it. "We can't take her with us, everyone'll be upset that we broke the 'no children' rule that's been enforced every year, and we can't leave her here alone, she'll die and we'll be murderers if we do that!"

"Not to mention that it would be a police officer breaking the law, and we cannot have that." Now that he knew what was going on, Frederick was working hard to come up with some solution that would solve every problem as it was, but each idea he had hit a brick wall when he realized that everyone he was thinking of pawning the child off on for a few hours would be at the same place they were going. He was just about to break that news to Maribelle when she gasped, throwing her hair back over her shoulder and reaching into her pocket to grab her phone. "Er, Maribelle, what's gotten into you? Did someone call you?"

"No, but I'm going to call someone to see if they can bail us out of this real quick," she replied, pulling up her recent calls and selecting a number close to the top of the screen. As she put her phone to her ear, she told him, "While I don't think this will work, anything's worth a shot. I don't want to lose my night with you unless there's no other option."

Accepting what she'd just said for what it was, it wasn't until she gave the recipient of her phone call an excited greeting that Frederick realized who she'd just called. "Oh no, don't think I will allow you doing that," he said, but she shushed him before he could say anything more. Taking action in a physical sense was off limits, due to what he had in his arms, so he had to stand by idly as she asked about hypothetical arrangements that she labeled as being "for a friend", but when she had ended the call and was putting her phone back in her pocket, he had the chance to chide her for what she'd just done. "Do you really believe that you can drop this child in _her_ care? Out of everyone in this town, she might be the single worst option."

"It's her or nothing, Frederick, and I'm not sacrificing my night for this. What's one more child for her to be watching?" Sounding flippant as she turned to head up to their bedroom to get ready, Maribelle made it a few steps out of the kitchen before freezing in her tracks, looking over her shoulder to see that Frederick had followed right behind her. "Okay, what gives? I came up with a solution to this problem, our night is saved, everything's fine!"

"I will admit that I'm happy we're not having to put aside what we wanted to do for the sake of others, but the way you are handling this is all wrong. Does Lissa have any idea of what you've just set her up for? Better yet, does she have any idea of who this child is?" His questions were both valid, and Maribelle knew that both had a negative answer, but she wasn't going to allow him to have the honor of being correct here. Instead, she just kept walking, heading up the stairs with the promise that she wouldn't take too long to get ready for their night.

He was left at the bottom, shaking his head, before noticing that the child he was holding had woken back up. "Why, hello there miss Kjelle," he said to her, leaning in closer to her innocent face so that she'd be able to see him. "I'm afraid that some things have happened in the time since we last spoke, but don't worry, it's nothing to do with how bad of parents you've been given in this life."

Her reaction was not to his words, but rather the closeness of his face to hers, and she lit up like she was enjoying the attention. That enjoyment faded fast, though, especially after he started talking again about things she was never going to understand him saying. His voice was just dull enough that it was lulling her back to sleep, and so he got to watch her trying to drift back off as he was talking; by the time Maribelle was done getting ready and was downstairs to take her off his hands so he could change, the baby was fast asleep yet again. "You're a real child whisperer," Maribelle said to him as he handed her the sleeping baby, "and I have no idea how you manage to do it. Does your storytelling bore them to sleep?"

"I would much prefer thinking of it as children finding comfort in my presence," he replied, thinking about how much her face had brightened once he'd gotten in closer to hers. "At any rate, you spend the next few minutes with her while I get ready, and then we'll depart. Unless, of course, you've come up with a different solution to this problem we seem to have found ourselves dealing with."

Already Maribelle was walking away with the baby in hand, not minding what he'd said at all. "Nope, we're dropping her off with Lissa and calling it good, it's not like Lissa's got any way of knowing who this kid belongs to if we don't tell her, and we'll just be gone for a few hours so there's no chance that any other adult can get to her before us. It's foolproof, when you think about it."

"Those are famous last words if I've ever heard them," Frederick said, before going upstairs. After mocking him for saying that, Maribelle went to work to figuring out how the plan she'd come up with while getting dressed was going to go off, but before she could get anywhere with that plan she had to get the baby into her carseat. In either a stroke of luck or on the off-chance that something was going to go amiss, they'd left her seat and its base there at the house for them to use, and Maribelle was rather skilled at getting children locked up tightly in their restraints, having had to do this to two of her own before.

However, she hadn't even begun considering how hard it would be to do that with the seat on the ground, while she was wearing heels and a short dress, nor had she thought about how the moment she left someone's arms that Kjelle was going to start screaming like she was being murdered. "Shush, there's no need for such noisy whining," she told the baby as she carefully placed her into position in her seat, before grabbing the different buckles and fighting with tiny arms and feet to get her strapped in tightly. She'd assumed that once she was in snugly, the crying would stop, so it came as a loud surprise when the crying only got louder, proving once again that this child had some strong lungs on her.

"Gods, Maribelle, it sounds like you've hurt her." In hearing the crying picking up, Frederick had foregone getting properly dressed in the comfort of the bedroom, coming downstairs with his clothes in disarray but overall able to fix them quickly, and he was surprised to see that his wife was standing over the carseat with the baby in it, rocking it with her foot to try and calm the crying. "There has to be a better way to handle this."

"I doubt it, I think this might be exactly why they left this seat—and her—here with us. Who wants to drive out of town with a screaming child with them? No one, that's who." Maribelle was one to talk on that, as she'd made many a drive with screaming children as her passengers, but she wasn't going to comment much on how the experience of having two young boys go with her on longer trips than out to a nearby rural community made her a hypocrite at best right then. "Come on, do you think we could get going here soon? I doubt she'll stop until she's released from the seat, and we can't quite do that right here."

He looked at her, then to the child, and back at her, before shrugging and beginning to tuck in his shirt. "You're lucky that I care for you as much as I do, I don't think I would be this accepting and understanding if you weren't such a lovely person. This whole situation is not something I am happy to be involved in, I hope you know, but because you're the one insistent on being involved I suppose I have no choice but to join you."

"It'll be a few hours, tops, that we've got her in Lissa's care. It's not like we're leaving her there for the rest of eternity." Maribelle watched as he finished making himself presentable, before picking up the carseat, as well as the small bag of belongings that had been brought when the child was first dropped off, and motioned for him to grab the seat's base. "We need to get this in the car so we can go, time's wasting with us just standing around!"

"I wouldn't consider it 'standing around' since we both just got ready, but you make the rules here it seems." He may have sounded unamused but he wasn't bothered too much by her bossiness. After so many years of being with her, it was just about every single day that she was treating him like this, so it would have been much stranger if she'd been being passive rather than assertive. "Let's hope Lissa doesn't put two and two together and refuse to have any part of this, I don't think you'd be accepting of that denial."

Maribelle was already at the front door, opening it to see the light dusting of snow that was beginning to cover everything, and she shivered from the cold. "I doubt she'll notice who this kid is until it's too late for her to do anything about it," she said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. "Boy, it's a lot colder out here than I thought it was going to be, isn't this storm supposed to be coming in later tonight?"

"The weather's always rather unpredictable at this time of year, what they forecast never quite matches up to what happens. Shall I go grab a jacket for you before we leave?" His offer was accepted, but only after they'd worked together to get the carseat in the back seat of their car, after they pushed aside the two seats belonging to their own children. Once that was taken care of and jackets were procured, it was only a matter of making sure the car's windows were clean and they were off, first to stop by Chrom's house then to head on to the party at the station.

The most noticeable thing about the short drive to their first destination was that the roads were almost entirely empty, and what cars were out were slipping on the slickened streets. They were no exception to that, their car having very little traction on the snow-coated roads, and by the time they were pulling up to the curb out front of the house they were looking for, they'd nearly skid through several stops and almost taken out a handful of mailboxes, something that had not been made any easier when there was a screaming child in the car with them. "You stay in here keeping the car warm," Maribelle said once they were parked and she was getting out. "I'll just run her and her stuff inside, thank Lissa a million times over for doing this last-minute, and then we can go."

"Try not to slip as you do so, I cannot imagine walking in heels will work out very well in these conditions." Frederick sounded like he was teasing her, so she stuck her tongue out at him before closing her door, only to open the back one. As she started getting the carseat unattached from its base, she was treated to loud screeching right in her ear, and by the time she, the seat, and the bag were out and on their way up the driveway she was regretting choosing the party over continuing her babysitting duties.

It took one knock at the door for someone to come answer it, but the person standing on the other side wasn't who Maribelle expected to be greeted by. "Oh, but mister Frederick already brought the boys over," Lucina said, turning to look to see if who she was referring to were nearby. When she didn't see them, she shrugged and turned back towards Maribelle. "And why's there a baby seat with you? Those boys are way too big for that."

Unsure of how to answer, Maribelle ignored what the girl was saying and pushed past her into the house, heading straight for where she assumed Lissa would be at the moment. The sitting room was covered in presents for the following day, as well as a few bags that most definitely belonged to children who had come over for the night, and sitting on one of the couches, looking half-awake and almost as if she was about to lean forward and fall asleep at any second, was exactly who she was looking for. "Lissa, my darling, I've brought that child I was telling you about, thank you so much for—"

"Uh, Maribelle?" Suddenly coming awake like her friend's appearance was enough to wake her back up, Lissa watched as she sat the carseat down at her feet but kept it covered with one of the jackets that had been grabbed before they left. "You're being awfully suspicious about all of this, aren't you going to tell me what's going on?"

"Yes, well, you see, I was babysitting for…a neighbor, and something came up and I need someone to help me out for a few hours so I can go to the station party like I'd agreed to." Now setting the bag of necessities down, Maribelle was hoping her white lie about who the child belonged to wasn't going to be uncovered right away. "You're a doll as always for being here when I need you most, you moving back to Ylisstol was easily one of the best decisions you ever made."

She was trying to rush her way out, but Lucina came in behind her, still caught up on the presence of any kind of carrier for a child, and she was the one to move the jacket from covering the seat to reveal the small infant inside. "Hey, wait a second, I know this baby…"

"You do?" both Lissa and Maribelle asked, looking to each other with differing expressions. Maribelle's was entirely in surprise, while Lissa's was in shock, and when they saw how the other reacted it dawned on them both that there was a chance someone present was going to be able to explain things—something Lissa was looking for, but Maribelle was dreading. How had she forgotten, in her panic of what to do, that the kids there would probably know, or at least recognize, the baby she'd suddenly dropped off?

"Yeah, I do! I think so, anyway. Let me go get Inigo, he'll know if I'm right." Grinning at her aunt, it was Lucina's turn to push past Maribelle as she set off in the direction she wanted to go, leaving the two women to look between each other once more.

"A neighbor's kid, huh?" Lissa repeated, her voice showing how much she didn't believe what she'd been told. "But why does Lucy know your neighbor's kid, and why would Inigo know them too?"

Rather than answer her, Maribelle gave a sheepish smile and started backing towards the door, hoping she'd be able to make her escape before anything more was said. She did not expect Lissa to get up and follow her towards the door. While they were on their way, the kids were headed back into the other room, Lucina at the lead with her brother right behind her, and the sight of just the two of them was enough to get Lissa to stop following, so that she could ask if them being where they were meant that the other kids were behaving themselves. That was when Maribelle made her break for the door, getting it open before Lissa called after her, "Don't you even think about leaving yet, Maribelle! You might have some explaining to do!"

"I would much rather not have to, especially since dear Frederick is outside waiting for me and we would like to get over there early enough to be able to come back to pick up all three children in our care before the storm gets too bad." It was a risk she was taking, refusing to give answers, but she knew that reminding Lissa of the impending weather would be enough to convince her to let her go anyway. For the third time, they looked each other in the eye, one of them begging and the other unamused, but Lissa ultimately decided to let her go with a wave. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart, my friend! You're a life-saver, and you'll have a blast with who I brought over!"

"It'd help if I knew who this kid was," Lissa grumbled in return, listening to the door close tightly before feeling the draft that it being opened had created in the house. "Gross, it's already getting cold out. I thought I'd gotten away from the cold like that when we moved back down here, but I guess not." Unaware of what was awaiting her when she went back to her spot in the sitting room, she did a quick check to make sure the other children—the two belonging to Maribelle and Frederick, the two belonging to Robin and Sumia, and her own sweet O'wain—were still playing nicely together, before she made her way back to where she'd been holed up since kids started arriving.

She was greeted by the sight of Lucina having managed to get the baby out of her carseat, bouncing her gently on her lap as the baby quietly fussed. "We do know this baby, Auntie Lissa," she said with conviction, which made her aunt slow her pace until she came to a stop. "Inigo looked through her bag, we know who it is and you don't and you're gonna be _so_ mad when you do."

"I guess that throws out the possibility that Maribelle stole this kid then, huh?" Lissa took her seat back on the couch, looking at her niece and nephew and how they were playing with this mystery child brought into her care. "Well, when are you going to get around to telling me where they came from, or how you know them?"

"She's a her, Auntie Lissa," Inigo corrected, scooting closer to where his sister and the baby were, "and she's a good kid, she really is. We've had her over here before to watch her a few times, but she was a lot smaller then."

Lucina nodded along with her brother's words, validating what he was saying. "She's gotten so big since the last time we got to play with her. It's almost like when you didn't live around here and we didn't get to see O'wain that much, babies grow so much when you don't see them all the time."

"So it's the kid of someone that's friends with Maribelle and with your parents, interesting." Knowing she wasn't going to get an answer out of either of them without a lot of specific questioning, since they seemed to be having fun not telling her what was going on, Lissa went ahead and took action for herself. She reached out to Lucina's shoulders, pulling her back so that she would angle the baby more towards her, so she could get a better look at her. "I don't know, that doesn't look like anyone I know, so maybe this baby belongs to a new friend of theirs that I haven't met?"

She was sounding hopeful, even though in her mind she knew the possibility of that was very slim. "You definitely know her parents," Lucina said, still bouncing the baby even though she was tilted backwards and that was making things difficult. "Like, super definitely know them. Spent a lot of time with them."

"I was afraid you'd say that." Letting go of her shoulders so that she could sit back up, Lissa considered getting up for herself to go take a closer look at the child, but Lucina instead turned around so that she was now facing her aunt with the baby still in her lap. At the new angle she was working with, she could tell that the baby looked somewhat familiar to her, but where she was so familiar from it was hard to correctly place.

It hit her relatively hard when she connected mental dots, and she found herself leaning forward to get a closer look without putting in too much effort. She'd drawn in a breath she was holding on to for as long as she could as she looked, taking note of the fair hair and pale eyes, the scrunched-up face in distress that vaguely resembled someone else's—and she wanted to cry for herself when she caught that this child looked very much like a representation of her parents once you knew who those parents were.

"I cannot believe Maribelle's done this to me," she very quietly said, her words almost impossible for anyone to hear. Her voice started raising as she continued speaking, each word louder than what came before it. "I cannot _believe_ that my best friend thinks I'm willing to watch someone's lovechild when I've got seven other kids to be watching!"

Instead of commenting on the anger that was present in his aunt's voice, Inigo chose to ask an innocent question based on what she'd said. "Um, what's a lovechild?"

"I'm not answering that, sorry." Collecting herself the best she could, Lissa got up off the couch and headed to leave the room, mumbling to herself as she did. When she got to the archway out to the hall, she stopped and, without turning around, asked, "Hey, Lucina, would you and Inigo mind watching that kid for a bit while I go…check on the other kids or something? I need a moment."

Without missing a beat, Lucina answered her aunt with a correction. "We will watch her, sure. She has a name, by the way, and you calling her 'it' and 'that kid' isn't very nice to her."

"Yeah, her name's Kjelle," Inigo added, having moved past being shut down relatively quickly. "She's a good baby and we can watch her for you while you go make sure no one's dead or anything." Although his aunt couldn't see it, he mimed someone slicing someone else's neck as he spoke.

"Uh, yeah, okay. Name's…whatever it is you just said. I'm going to go now." Flustered, Lissa still didn't look back at her niblings before she was out of the room, not to go see where the other kids were but to instead go up to what used to be her bedroom (which had been converted into a guest room oh-so-long before but hadn't ever felt like it until after she'd moved away to Ferox and wasn't crashing there frequently) to hole herself up and process what had just happened. She wasn't tripped up about there being _a_ baby, but rather whose baby it was.

Hadn't someone, once upon a time, probably Maribelle with her involvement in that mess, put the idea in her head that Vaike would never be a good parent? Hadn't she been encouraged to leave him for someone else because he wasn't going to amount to being much of a family man? Why, then, was she expected to be watching some child of his, that was definitely his given the story that everyone seemed to know about them? "But if it's his kid, then who's the mom? Then who's…" Her repetition of her question trailed off when she realized who, exactly, the mom had to be, and what came next was a groan that she gave with enough force to throw herself onto the guest room bed.

When she'd left him, she'd opened up the door for him to find someone he clearly loved more than he'd ever loved her, and now she had to deal with that. Kind of like how he'd had to deal with her moving on before he had.

* * *

"That's that taken care of, I guess. Thank everything that we've got someone like Maribelle, who actually knows how to take care of children, in charge right now. Can you imagine if we'd trusted someone else instead of her? We might end up never seeing our baby again." There were a lot of things going through Sully's mind at the moment, and she was trying to keep herself calm and collected in the current situation. She knew that everything was handled, and that Maribelle wouldn't intentionally do them any harm when it came to something this important, but at the same time, she also knew that Maribelle did tend to do things her own way. "But what if—"

"None 'a that 'what if' nonsense, got it? You did what y'had t'do in order to make sure everythin' works out, and I'm sure nothin' will go wrong. Not a single thing." Grabbing her hand to carefully squeeze it, reminding her that he was there so they could get through this together, Vaike smiled. "We just have t'get through tonight, then when the storm's blown over tomorrow we can get home and get her and everythin' will be fine."

"You act like I don't know that. Which I do know that, clearly. It's just a lot to handle, going from this being the first time we're apart from her for a few hours to the first time we're without her overnight." There was a clarification that she could have made, that these were first times since they'd first brought her home, but it didn't feel like it'd have the same impact if she did clarify that. "We should have brought her with us, that way at least we'd all be stranded here together."

"And if somethin' were t'happen t'her, we'd be out here with nowhere to go. At least with her bein' with Maribelle, if somethin' happens that's in town and there's all sorts 'a people around who can help." His smile was fading, even though he was trying to remain upbeat about everything. "Hey, let's just stop dwellin' on this for a little bit, see if anyone here can do somethin' t'get ya cheered back up. I know it ain't gonna be easy, but it's worth a shot since we're gonna be out here all night anyway."

It was still early in the evening, but she wasn't going to point that out when she knew he was right. It was best if she'd just stop getting caught up on things she couldn't change or fix, and if she'd accept that her child was in the care of someone who knew what they were doing. "I guess we can see what they're doing, chances are it's not going to be anything we're interested in, though."

"You're probably right on that, but y'know what? We're gonna make the best of what's been given t'us, even if we're havin' t'do it while missin' a big part of us." Opening the door to let them both out of the room, Vaike made it exactly two steps outside the room before a child was clinging to his leg, screaming their head off. "Uh, what's this about, huh? Don't ya know t'at least introduce yourself 'fore ya start grabbin' onto someone?"

The kid didn't stop screaming, but they did detach themselves from his leg, only to do the exact same thing to Sully. She wasn't as annoyed by it, but she did give the kid a shake of her head as she looked down on them. "Did someone scare you or something?" she asked, reaching down to pull the kid's face off of her so she could look them in the eyes. "I mean, why else would you be behaving like this?"

"He's hiding from having to help with housework," Panne called in reply, seemingly knowing what was happening back by the door to her bedroom. "Bring him in here, if you don't mind, and I will get him on the task he needs to be doing." They ended up not needing to do that, as he heard his mother's voice and bolted back towards where she was without being prodded further, which would have been fine if they hadn't needed to go that direction anyway.

Back in the main room of the house, everything looked to be as it had been when they'd first come in, except people were actually sitting in the various chairs that were situated in the room. "Here, you can sit here," Yarne's timid voice said when he saw the two adults enter, jumping from his seat so that they could share it. After thanking him they accepted his offer, and he sat on the floor directly in front of them, leaning back into their legs. "I'll take this spot instead, you'll keep me nice and safe."

"Or you can get up and help your brother and sister with the list of chores you've been neglecting." Holding the youngest child on her hip (and said child had one of her long braids in her mouth as a chewtoy), Panne pointed towards where the other two children were looking at something written on a paper on the kitchen table, and Yarne grumbled as he got back up to join them. "That's right, you cannot hide from your tasks simply because someone you feel comfortable with is here."

"I'm going to assume you mean me on that one, which leads to the question of why he'd feel that way. Pretty sure that he's got a lot of reasons to dislike me." Giving a forced laugh, Sully watched the boy as he went to his siblings and started trying to look at the same thing they were. "Not…like I would remember any of that, though."

"For all the time we've spent together as of late, it's surprising that we haven't spoken at length about where the memories you have of the incident end and where the memories that come after begin." Panne seemed to be wanting to add more to what she was saying, but her attention was drawn to what her children were doing, and when none of them seemed to be moving from their spot she sighed, bending down to set the child she was holding down on the floor. "You three aren't going to get what I've asked you to do done in any timely manner, are you? Do you need your mother holding your hands while you work?"

The kids all gave varying answers of how they understood and didn't need help, but it was too little too late; she walked across the room and started physically moving them in the direction they needed to go for their particular chores. "And that's why them gettin' work done only happens when she ain't in town with y'all, they need the actual forcin' to do anythin' and I ain't the kind 'a guy to be forcin' my kids t'do anythin'." Donny laughed, leaning forward in the seat he had taken to look at the couple sharing a seat near him. "Bet y'all could learn a thing or two 'bout parentin' skills from Panne if needed."

"We have plenty of time to learn what we need to, our daughter's only a couple months old and doesn't do much except eat and sleep. She'll get around to doing other things when she gets there, and we'll deal with her however the hell we want to when the time comes." Looking away from where the rough style of parenting was happening, Sully found herself fixated on what the child on the floor was doing, about how she was sitting in the middle of the room looking wide-eyed at everyone she could see, before falling forward and catching herself in a crawl, scurrying towards her father at full speed. She knocked into Donny's leg and he picked her up, letting her find a spot in his lap to lay down and start sucking on her fist. "Gods, she's not all that much younger than that one there, now that I think about it."

"That's enough of a difference 'tween 'em, if yours ain't but a couple months old. Kitte here'll be a year old in a couple months, if y'feel what kind 'a difference that means." He bounced one leg to get the girl to perk up, her looking around the room once more. "But I guess I see it, I mean, that kid you've got's your first, right? Always different with the first one."

"Can't imagine ever havin' more than one child, honestly," Vaike admitted, looking away from the baby on Donny's lap to see if he could see any of the other kids, but they were long gone, shooed off into different corners of the house to get work done. "Not sayin' it couldn't happen, but…"

"Let's, uh, not talk about that right now, given what we're missing by being here." To be honest, she would have loved to talk about that and crack jokes at the expense of someone not present and never to be aware of what was said, but the gravity of the situation was hitting Sully rather hard in that moment. She'd never thought of herself as someone who was cut out to be a mother, but she'd willingly took on the challenge simply because she felt she could do it, and now she was missing out on one of the big milestones in her baby's life because of a kind action she'd agreed to do. The last thing she felt comfortable with doing right then was making jokes about second children and why they happened.

"Sorry about what happened there, those kids never seem to want to do their chores when we have company over. I suppose it is quite different for them to have anyone who isn't family in the house, but it does not excuse their behavior." Re-entering the room and the conversation, Panne naturally drew everyone's attention towards her, and with good reason: she was making it clear that she was the leader of the household and she wanted everyone and everything to be up to her standards. When she was able to see exactly what everyone there was doing, she shook her head and rushed to Donny's side, picking up Kitte off of his lap and scooping her back under her arm against her hip once more. "You cannot let her lay around like that, she'll grow up to be a lazy child and we do not need another one of those in this house."

"I don't know who you're implyin's a lazy child 'round here, 'cause all of 'em like gettin' underfoot out in the fields, but I do know that her layin' like that ain't gonna do anythin' bad, no ma'am." Donny laughed, although his laugh seemed hollow and like he was genuinely offended at what he'd just heard. "Give 'er back here so I can watch while you're chasin' the other kiddos down."

"I'll hold onto her while I do it, don't you worry. I believe that them seeing me coming at them with her attached will make them work twice as fast." Turning to the two guests, Panne flashed a small smile in their direction. "Have to do whatever it takes to make the children get this house in perfect condition for you to be staying here."

"You don't need to go above and beyond with cleaning this place up while we're here, we can handle a bit of a disaster." While she had said that to try and ease whatever tensions were bubbling between the homeowners, Sully immediately regretted the words she chose when she saw Panne tense up and storm out of the room, bellowing for any of the children to come from where they were cleaning. "Damn it, I shouldn't have said that, now she thinks I think it's a disaster already."

"To be fair, us bein' here is a disaster, but that's not anythin' on them," Vaike reminded her, nudging her with his shoulder. "Maybe you could go follow her to tell her that, so that those poor kids don't get an earful for nothin'."

She nodded, standing up as she did. "You're right, I've got to set that straight right away. Last thing we need is miscommunications and assumptions happening, we all know how those work out." Following down where Panne could still be heard yelling, she stopped herself a few times because she thought that what she was doing was pointless, that she shouldn't meddle in other people's family issues, but she pressed on because she reminded herself over and over that she was to blame for this happening, she needed to clear the air. The part of the house they were in was a back hallway, somewhere that looked just as tacked on as the front bedroom did, and with every step Sully noticed that it was getting colder around her.

Wherever this was, it wasn't nearly as insulated and warm as the rest of the house, and she felt bad that there were kids somewhere as chilly as that. At the end of the hall was a window, cracked open and letting the draft in, that had the wind squealing through it as the weather outside had gone from a light flurry to downright impossible to see anything, and she felt unable to move past looking out that window. There were rooms on either side, or at least doors, and on the other side of one of them she could still hear Panne's voice, but she couldn't bring herself to open the door to see what was going on. She was transfixed by the storm they'd ended up in, her mind falling back to the last time she'd seen snow like that.

"'scuse me, but I gotta close that window," a voice belonging to a small child said, and she snapped herself out of her trance to look down, seeing the little boy that had clung to her earlier. "Ma says that it's bad to keep it open too long."

She knew this was Panne and Donny's child, but her mind was trying to tell her, for a split second, that it could have been one of Maribelle's boys in how he spoke. "Why did she want it open to begin with, can you tell me that?" she asked, watching as he stood on tiptoes to close the window, the lack of wind immediately causing the hallway to warm up. "It's a bad storm out there, what if it had blown the window out?"

"It wouldn't have, don't worry!" Giggling, the boy turned to look at her, his gap-toothed smile almost infectious. "It gets super hot over here when we clean up, Ma always says keep the window open so we don't melt!"

Although it was hard to resist smiling back at him, she wasn't going to stop sounding like a concerned parent. "Which one of you was over here doing cleaning hot enough to melt someone? That's dangerous."

"Me 'nd Yarne 'nd Sil, that's who!" he replied, grabbing both of her legs so he could attempt hugging her. "You're my favorite, miss lady! I like your hair!" He erupted into giggles again and wouldn't let go of her, so she really was stuck standing there, looking out the window, until Panne opened the door she was behind when she finally heard the laughter. The boy quieted down immediately at his mother's unamused breath she took in at seeing him having fun, and he tried hiding behind Sully to get out of being scolded, but it was too late.

"Why does it look like someone's not doing what's been asked of them?" Her voice wasn't angry any longer, but there was still a sternness in how Panne spoke that made her child immediately obey her. He backed away, heading down the hall towards the main room, and she sighed, looking to Sully as apologetically as she could. "I am so sorry about that, for some reason he struggles the most out of all of them with focusing on his task. I have Yarne washing sheets for the beds you will be sleeping in, and Sil is getting the leftover laundry taken care of as fast as she can so we can get that put away before bedtime, but Bud there, he doesn't quite work like they do."

Feigning a smile, Sully thought for a moment about the three children in question, before her mind started drifting off to a certain other child in her life. She opened her mouth slightly to try and get a word out, but the only thing coming to her tongue was asking a question she'd never thought of until she'd heard Panne so casually refer to her children not necessarily by their given names. "How did you end up giving them nicknames like that, if you don't mind me asking? Not that I would want to ever call Kjelle anything _but_ her given name, but…you know, parent things."

"Had you never noticed that I call the middle two by nicknames before this? And after that time we spent at the camp with you?" Amused, Panne came out of what was obviously the laundry room, Kitte still held on her hip, and after checking to make sure that the window at the end of the hall was closed tightly (shaking her head about the "stupid" idea her children had that they needed to open it while washing clothes), she motioned for Sully to follow her back down the hall. As they walked, she explained what had been asked about. "It's because they prefer the nicknames to their full names, which I can understand in one case but not in the other. Sil has such a 'beautiful' name that her father selected from some article he read, yet she chooses to shorten it to spite him for it."

"What, are y'all talkin' 'bout names over there now?" In the time they'd been gone, it seemed that the two men in the main room had decided to do something that wasn't just sitting around, and Donny was standing right by the hallway so he was the first to hear them as they came back. "I won't say I'm the best at namin' my kids, but I sure ain't the worst at it."

"Says the one whose two name contributions have been overridden by the children wanting nicknames rather than the names you gave them." It was a playful kind of banter, especially as it went on and Donny insisted that he was still good at naming children, and Panne had to keep reminding him that he named one child Silke (which was shortened to Sil) and the other after himself but with a different middle name (that would have been a decent nickname in itself if it wasn't a butchered-for-uniqueness spelling of the word chlorophyll, hence the nickname Bud, as in flowers). But what came out of it, as the two of them went back and forth over if that was acceptable or not, was the realization for the other adults there that there was the chance that their child, with the name they'd given her, would do as those kids had done and prefer to be called something else.

They weren't going to discuss that right there, when they were being treated to listening to those more experienced parents go back and forth over how they felt about their own naming skills, but it was something that'd make for a good conversation on their ride home. Whenever that ride home was going to happen, anyway. Wordlessly, as to not interrupt the discussion happening across the room as they currently were situated, Sully motioned for Vaike to go look out the nearest window, which he initially responded to by giving her a very confused expression, but after she waved for him to do it he did, and so he was treated to the sight of the blowing snow so strong that nothing outside could be seen, no fences or fields or vehicles.

While he was at the window, she came up to his side, nudging against him like he had done to her before. "I'm glad we're in here and not out there, even if it means…" She gestured with a shoulder backwards towards the couple still going on about their children's names. "Even if it means having to listen to that."

"Might be an argument we have someday, we should get t'listenin' to whatever it is they're sayin'. Except we wouldn't name kids anywhere near as badly as they did, right?" His question, and how his whisper was still able to show that he was asking to be assured that he was right, struck a nerve within her, as she wasn't sure how to respond without revealing her similar worry that they already had, sparking that discussion. After all, they had chosen to give their child her middle name as a first name, who was to be certain she wouldn't grow up hating it and insisting she go by something else?

Her silence as she listened to the discussion happening behind them was telling enough to him, letting him know how she felt without needing to say a word. He nodded in understanding, still looking out the window, as the wonder of how long this all was going to last came to his mind. The last time they'd been trapped somewhere by snow, it took over a week before they could leave; just the idea that they'd be stuck out on the farm longer than a night hurt him a lot more than he wanted to admit to. Times really had changed, and while some things were better, the suffering caused by not being where they belonged wasn't something that could be gotten over easily.

* * *

 **A/N: _heh_ yeah this is going places and I love it c:**


	3. Stuck to Secrets

The parking lot at the police station was filled with cars, each one belonging to a person or two that was already there, and it was by some stroke of luck that the car that Frederick and Maribelle were in didn't manage to hit any of the others. Everything was covered in snow, and while it wasn't coming down too hard at that moment there was no indication that it wasn't about to start falling harder. "Do you think everyone inside knows about how bad it's gotten out here?" Maribelle asked, as her door was opened and she found herself assaulted with a freezing cold wind that hadn't been present the last time she was out of the car. "I'm starting to have second thoughts about being here after all…"

"I would be inclined to agree with you, but there is the same amount of danger in returning now as there will be in returning later," Frederick replied, already having gotten out so that he could be the one to help his wife out of her seat. "At this point, as we're already here, it makes no sense to retrace our steps and go home. We'll do as we intended, spend a few hours here, then drive back before the roads get too much worse."

"I suppose that makes sense. I mean, we didn't almost die as many times between Chrom's house and here as we did getting to Chrom's house, so maybe it'll all work out and things'll just be easier on the return trip later." She was resisting chattering her teeth, so her words came out forced when she spoke, something he found endearing and she hated about being out in the cold. There was also the issue of her being in heels in a snow-filled parking lot, but Frederick made sure to handle that problem by picking her up and carrying her to the station's door, setting her down only when he knew the ground underfoot was safe and dry.

Waiting for them at the front door, bundled up in a jacket that was clearly not her own, was Sumia, who let them in at the first chance she had. "We began to get worried if you two were ever going to make it," she said, smiling first at Frederick before looking to Maribelle, her eyes giving her a once-over as her face fell. "Why are you dressed like this is the fanciest event of the year? It's snowing out!"

"Someone asks me this every year, but I always dress up as much as possible when we come to this event. I should have kept the weather conditions in mind when I picked my footwear this year, however." Laughing off the judgmental look she was getting, Maribelle adjusted her hair and made sure that she was presenting herself as put-together as possible, going as far as to remove the jacket she'd been wearing to reveal even more of her outfit that was not weather-appropriate in the slightest. "Everything outside's a bit snowier than I figured it would be at this point."

"We've all been saying that, there's even been talk of just calling off the party until after the holiday. But someone," Sumia's eyes shifted towards where Chrom, Robin, and a few other officers were standing, "keeps insisting that we stay like we do every year. You both know Chrom, stubborn as always and sure that we'll be able to get home at the end of the night."

"I think I'll give it a shot on talking him out of holding that idea in his mind, the road conditions are simply terrible out there, and we don't need to risk the lives of those who are capable of driving in them, especially since on—" Maribelle loudly gasped to cut Frederick off, and he paused, confused at why she had done something so rude. "—Maribelle? What was that for?"

"You were about to say something about someone unable to say anything otherwise," she explained, her eyes wide with surprise that he'd been going down that path. "I don't think Chrom's rude enough to pull someone who elected to skip the party away from their family like they'd wanted to be today." As she spoke, she was trying her hardest to discreetly wink at him, to give him the message that perhaps it was for the best if they didn't speak of that person at all.  
He got what she was trying to get across, shifting uncomfortably as he stood. "Ahem, you're right about that. At any rate, it would be risking the lives of the two of those drivers that are here tonight, and we could do without that happening." He bowed to excuse himself, and as he walked to join up with Chrom and the others, he was left wondering why Maribelle had been so insistent that he leave some things secret.

In her mind, however, she knew exactly why they needed to not tell anyone that one of their few snow-weather drivers was stranded somewhere outside of town. Certain people there would know that she was babysitting, and if it came out that she'd given the baby off to Lissa of all people, because of what had happened, she would never get to live it down. "So, uh, what are you thinking about?" Sumia's question startled Maribelle but she didn't mind it, even though she had to come up with an answer on the fly that wouldn't give what she'd done away. "I keep thinking about my girls, so I'm sure your mind's stuck on your boys right now. Did you get them some good gifts this year?"

"Yes, most definitely, like we always do. It's great that they have such similar interests and that we can split gifts between them, makes for much easier shopping when this time of year comes!" She could have spoken about the gifts she'd gotten for hours, as she was immensely proud of what she'd picked out, but someone was approaching them and she didn't want to be rude and ignore their newcomer. "Oh, if it isn't Olivia! I've known you were going to be here tonight and yet it's still a surprise to actually see you!"

Blushing as she took the comment to heart, Olivia brought a hand to cover one of her reddened cheeks. "I just thought, since Lucina and Inigo are old enough to help watch any younger children now, they could…you know, help. We discussed this last year when we watched them instead of attending, didn't we?" Her hand slipped down as she saw Maribelle's nod, followed by Sumia's gentle laugh. "Did I say something wrong? What's so funny with what I said?"

"Nothing's funny with it, what's funny is that you can trust your children to watch others without incident. You put the girls in charge of anything and either Cynthia's smothering it or Morgan's beating it up, there is no balance there." Sumia's continued laughter made Maribelle hope that neither of those things were going to happen to her boys, or more importantly, neither thing was going to happen to poor Kjelle. "I just love how our children are all together, all the time, though! It's lovely to see that they're such good friends."

"I agree, with the age differences between all of them it'd make more sense for them to not get along, but any time I see Lucina or Inigo bonding with, say, one of Maribelle's boys, it warms my heart." Tilting her head down as she tried to not see the responses of either of the people she was talking to, Olivia inhaled deeply before hurriedly adding, "I really like how my children didn't become incredibly shy like me, they actually know how to interact with others and I could learn from them on that."

"There's nothing wrong with being shy, don't be ashamed that you don't always want to come out and do things like this," Maribelle said, with Sumia nodding along. "You're perfect the way you are, no need to change." She wondered for a moment if anyone would ever say the same about her, before remembering that she was a flawed person with a long list of mistakes everyone liked to hold over her head; even as she was trying to talk someone out of being hard on themselves she knew she was actively doing something that was only adding to that list.

At least these ladies weren't the kind of woman to get suspicious and worried about what their children were doing and wouldn't call the babysitter to see what was going on, she knew. If anyone was going to be calling Lissa between the three of them, it was going to be her and only her, and she'd have to do it somewhere private and alone in case they got to talking about the baby she'd dropped off. It would be the worst possible situation if someone happened to overhear her mention that child, when she should have been at home with her parents who were far away from town at the moment. "You know what, you're right Maribelle. I shouldn't want to change when I have friends like you two who accept me how I am." Olivia lifted her head once more, smiling meekly at the two. "Say, why don't we find somewhere to sit and chat? It's not every day the three of us get the chance to be together without at least one child underfoot."

Knowing exactly where the best sitting area in the station was, having spent a lot of time hanging around there, Maribelle started to lead the way with the other two following, but they were stopped by someone calling all three of their names, catching them all off-guard. "It should have been expected that once all of you had arrived you would scurry off to a corner to be with each other," Miriel said as she came up behind them, having left where she had been with Chrom and the others to follow them where they were headed. "I suppose that you will need some sort of supervision, and while I myself would not be the best for the task, I came to ask who you would be fine with listening in on you."

"Listening in on us? We don't need anyone doing that," Sumia replied, something the other two agreed with. "But if it's going to be anyone, make it Cordelia. If she's here. I, uh, haven't seen her yet, which is weird since I've been here since everyone else started showing up."

"She's around, I will try my hardest to pull her away from what it is she's doing in order to join her to your posse." That seemed like enough of an interruption to them, so they resumed heading off, but Miriel groaned the moment they started walking. "Excuse me, but did I say I was finished with you three?"

"I'd tell you to go bother your date, rather than us, but we all know you're here to keep doing paperwork while everyone else celebrates." Maribelle expected a snappish response, but when she got a stifled laugh she had to do a double-take, something that neither of her companions did even though they were just as confused. "Wait, do you mean you _do_ have a date to this?"

"No one would believe me if I said I did, but yes I do. He's around, somewhere, be careful not to stumble upon him when you're least expecting it." She sounded entirely serious as she spoke, which only raised the level of disbelief in the three ladies she was speaking with.

Even though she was the shyest one of the three, Olivia was the only one who found her voice to respond to the comment. "So you're saying that you brought someone with you? Oh Miriel, that's amazing! A woman like you deserves a strong, sensible man who understands you in their life! Have we met the lucky man before?"

"Er, well, yes, everyone here has." Miriel tugged at the collar of her shirt, becoming flustered that the attention had turned from her trying to impose rules on the ladies to her romantic pursuits. "The thing is, I could tell you over and over again who it is but you'd never believe me. No one has believed me yet."

The names started getting thrown out, even though there were few people that all three of them knew that were single and open to dating someone, and with every name she had to tell them they were completely wrong. When they ran out of options she sighed and told them they did exactly as expected, before turning and reminding them she was going to grab someone to supervise them, and in the wake of her news they were left with more questions than anything. "Can you believe that? Her, having a date to something like this?" Maribelle asked, sounding excited at the idea. "It's absurd, I can't believe it and I heard it come from her own mouth."

"I think it's most strange that we supposedly know the guy but none of us could name him for her. She must have just made him up in her head, that sounds like a Miriel thing to do." Sumia tapped her chin in thought before shrugging. "Or she's ashamed to admit to who it is. Do you think she's the unlucky soul that got roped into bringing that ex-criminal to the party this year?"

They laughed at the idea, heading towards the seating area that had been their destination all along, but even though she'd departed the group Miriel had still been listening to them and their gossip and she sighed at what they'd left off on. "Even I would not be so desperate to impress someone as to make a date up, or to bring someone I have no real interest in despite trying to convince anyone otherwise. However, I…seem to have lost track of where he's gotten off to, I'll have to find him once I've pulled Cordelia from her 'pressing' matters she's undoubtedly still involved in."

As she walked towards the part of the station with the individual offices, shaking her head as she went, the group closest to the door didn't seem to notice that she'd left, or that in her stead was a rather forgettable man that was trying his hardest to be involved in the conversation at hand. Miriel knew exactly where Cordelia was, she'd been there since before the festivities had started, and she wasn't going to move from her spot unless something pulled her from it. "Come on, please let me in," she was begging as she knocked her fist on a locked office door, her red hair in disarray as she'd neglected to make sure she didn't mess it up in her frantic knocking. "I know you're in there, we just need to discuss things!"

"The very person I'm looking for," Miriel said upon approach, Cordelia not even turning to see who was joining her as she knew by the stern sound of the voice. "Your dear friends have chosen you to be their supervisor for the evening, would you be able to pull yourself away from this door long enough to attempt having a decent evening?"

Cordelia slowly turned her head to look at Miriel, her eyes reddened and her cheeks soaked with tears. "I can try, certainly, but it won't work. Do you know what it's like to be crushed like this, Miriel?"

"Seeing as I have never allowed myself to be attached to someone ignorant to how I feel, I cannot say that I do know. Judging by how you look, I'll assume it's not a great feeling to have." Miriel leaned up against the wall next to the door Cordelia was resuming knocking on, shaking her head as she reached into her pocket to retrieve a ring of keys. "Chrom trusted me with these for tonight to keep watch on anyone who chooses to slip away, would you like me to unlock the door for you so that you can face him?"

"You wouldn't do such a thing, would you?" Incredulously, Cordelia stopped knocking when she heard the jingle of the keys, and as she watched in disbelief Miriel went ahead and unlocked the door, before pushing herself up off the wall. "Wh-what's that for? I figured you would laugh at my misery and refuse to assist me, yet here you are, helping me sneak into someone's office!"

Tucking the keys back into her pocket, Miriel laughed. "Consider it a holiday gift from someone who admires your dedication to your tasks. You get in there and speak with him, then report to watching your friends at once. That's a message delivered to you by me from your commander, by the way, so there is no room for going back on it."

"I hear you, loud and clear," she choked out in reply, before trying to steel herself for opening the door and facing what was on the other side. This issue with romance had been going on for far too long, and Cordelia had finally been ready to pick a man and stick with him, but one of them had a farfetched notion in his mind that he was going to be her object of affections and had pushed the other one away, when she needed to set things straight. And now both of them were locked in offices and she needed to deal with them, one at a time. Her hand on the doorknob, she took a few solid breaths before turning it to let herself in. Gaius could come later, right now she needed to talk things through with Stahl.

Immediately the reason for why she'd been locked out came to light, when she walked in to a darkened office with him clearly asleep at the desk. Always the heavy sleeper, of course he'd been ignoring her knocks and pleas, and it wasn't anything to do with her being the romantic mess that she was. "Oh damn, maybe I shouldn't have assumed he was ignoring me," she mumbled to herself, backing out of the office, but when she was most of the way out of the door, she hit something warm and person-like.

This was nothing but trouble. "So, you pick checking in on him over checking in on me, is that right?" Gaius asked, his voice slightly garbled as he had a lollipop hanging out of his mouth. He removed it and pointed it at her as she turned around, trying to get away from him. "Why, I thought we had something special there, what about all those times at my place, huh? What about the times in public, the hand-holding and the kissing and the—"

"None of that happened," she interrupted, pulling parts of her messy hair in front of her face to hide the fact that she was blushing heavily. "We went on a few casual dates and nothing went further than that. Don't push your fantasies on me."

"That's still more than you did with him, isn't it? Never once saw you going out with him, never heard you talk about how you've spent time at carnivals and museums with him. What's he got going for him that I don't?" The fact that they were in the still-opened doorway to Stahl's office while having this conversation wasn't sitting well with Cordelia, but when she tried to step away he grabbed her by the arm, putting his lollipop back in his mouth. "Not so fast, where do you think you're going?"

She had an answer at the ready, thankful again for what Miriel had done for her. "I have a job to do tonight, I'm expected to keep a few of our guests in line."

"And I'm here as your date, so whatever you're doing, I'll be there with you the whole time." His grip on her arm was loose, but it was just strong enough to make her feel like she couldn't get away without a struggle. "Listen, I get it, I'm not your type and that's fine, but you've led me on for a long time, Cordelia. A long time. I'm not letting that go easily."

"I'm not making any decisions about any of that, stop talking to me like I've decided I'm disinterested in you." Speaking even though she knew that the end goal was to turn him away because she'd finally gotten to the point where she couldn't stand his criminal nature and some of his personal quirks, Cordelia wanted to sound like she was going to let whoever the loser of her affections down a lot easier. "You are indeed my date tonight, but you've been my date to every holiday party here since I started working here and you've never been this controlling before this. Did something change?"

"I can't say that it has, but I can't say it hasn't either. Maybe what's changed is something with you, not with me." He shrugged, letting go of her arm so she could retract it out of his reach. "Not going to point those fingers quite yet though, that'd be awfully rude of me. Let's just go do whatever your assigned task is, maybe we'll get to snack on something while we're doing it."

As much as she didn't want to leave that spot with him at her side, Cordelia knew that she didn't have a choice, and even still, the thought of leaving Gaius somewhere with access to Stahl was a bit frightening at the moment. She gave the still-opened office door a parting glance as she was led away, hoping that he wouldn't be too concerned about why his locked door had been opened without anyone there to ask about it. At the moment, though, he was still taking a nap and had no idea that anything had transpired so close to his position, and that was how it was going to remain until he was awake and walking around the station, most likely.

The party wasn't very lively, but it never really was, the point of gathering was to spend a night with friends getting to catch up and chat when they didn't always have the chance otherwise. But for one unlucky officer, there was still work to be done, and from the depths of their corner, crowded, uncared for office they were getting an awful lot of reports about quickly-worsening road conditions and several calls asking if the city should just be shut down for the night. And Lon'qu, hearing each of these calls and cursing the fact that he'd been dragged to live in Ylisstol where people couldn't handle a bit of snow, was resigned to the fact that this was how his night was going to go. His wife and son were somewhere else, he was on duty, and he couldn't be bothered to care about anything but the job he was expected to do.

If any of the officers wanted to know that the roads were getting worse by the second, they'd have to come and ask, he wasn't going to break from his setup to go tell someone the bad news. It wasn't like any of them were going to care if he did say something, anyway, so he chose not to say a word.

Little did he know that Frederick, first-handedly aware of the conditions outside the station's doors, was trying to get that very point across to Chrom and Robin both, but he was being shot down at every chance because the reports had all said the storm wouldn't ramp up until after they were all headed home. "You're being worrisome, don't stress about it," Chrom said with a laugh after Frederick finally got his chance to say his concern. "It'll all be fine, and if it's not, well, we'll find a way to make things work out. We have a Feroxi driver on staff, we can make any kind of winter-weather driving happen."

The could, except when the weather reports that were coming in were detailing conditions that made that very same driver thankful he was on duty overnight, it might have been for the best if Chrom had considered otherwise. "I should tell one of them, but is there a point to it?" Lon'qu asked himself, resting an arm on his desk as he listened to the updated weather report. "They won't listen to a word of it, I'm certain. Worth the stress? I think not."

The same thought had long since vacated Frederick's mind, after being shut down like he had. "I understand that I'm much warier about things than everyone else, but I'll give it to you that you must be right. There should be enough vehicle space to get everyone home safe and sound if needed."

"As long as Stahl didn't expect there to be a surplus of food for him to take home this year," Robin said with a laugh, ribbing Frederick to try and get him to crack a smile, but when the attempt fell flat he dropped his arm and coughed to restore his normal put-togetherness. "At any rate, has anyone actually seen Stahl tonight? He worked earlier today, and he was still here when I headed home after my shift was over, but I haven't seen him around."

"He's in his office, pretty sure," the young-sounding voice belonging to Nowi chimed in, with her equally-small partner Ricken right at her side nodding in agreement. "Last we saw when we were back there was Cordelia at the door, so where else would he be?"

Chrom shrugged, looking around and seeing that the very person Nowi was speaking of was heading off towards the sitting area, someone right at her side with every step. "That makes sense, we all know how he gets when he sees Gaius milling around here, and it seems every year Cordelia makes the choice to invite him as her date. When will she learn not to do that, it's only causing issues between my officers."

"She claims she's been working on it, but we all know how well that'll work out for her." It seemed that, in fact, everyone did not know what Robin was referring to, and he had to cough again to bring himself to find the ability to say it. "You know, she's had feelings for someone else around here much longer than either of them, she's struggling to find the spot within herself to juggle romantic leanings for three very different men."

There was a moment where everyone there tried to understand what he was referring to, and he had high hopes that people would succeed, but he was only given blank looks in return, leading him to apologize and to ask everyone to forget what he'd just said. "It's okay, Robin, sometimes we all say something that people just don't get." Sounding cheerful as always, Ricken puffed out his chest and shoulders before continuing with, "Like whenever I say how old I am and everyone laughs at me, it's kind of like that."

"Or when everyone asks if I'm younger than you and you have to feel bad that someone much older than you's being treated like that?" Nowi's addition made him deflate quickly, going from proudly standing tall to shrinking back to the outside of their little circle, causing her to start laughing loudly. "Oh man, you're hilarious when you get knocked down. I shouldn't laugh at you, but I am anyway!"

"Thanks, Nowi," he muttered, hanging his head low. "Now you're making me into a joke in front of all the cool guys."

"Don't think of us as 'cool' guys, Ricken, think of us as the elder officers around here that you want to be like." Chrom smiled down at him, running a hand through the side of his hair as he did. "We're just doing our jobs, but we have the age and experience on you. And, uh, the experience on Nowi, not so much the age."

She wasn't fazed by what he said, crouching down to look Ricken directly in the face. "Come on, let's go back to your office and play games like we always do, it'll cheer you right up!" It didn't make him perk up, but it gave her an opening to pull him away down the hall, waving at the three men they were leaving behind until they disappeared around the corner.

"Do…either of you know, exactly, how old she is?" Robin asked, looking between Chrom and Frederick to see them both shake their heads in response, and he sighed. "Well, as long as she's not too young there really isn't an issue, right? There's no way she's the oldest person on staff, not when we have someone else who looks and acts much, much older."

"Is he even here tonight?" Chrom was once again looking around, seeing that they were now the only three in that particular room in the station, everyone else having moved to their own corners of the place. "Not that I don't want him here, of course, but I haven't heard that laugh of his and I don't think he's actually coming."

"He wasn't on the list of people who were not attending this year that Miriel and I compiled over the past week. But it's Gregor, knowing him he's forgotten that there's a party to be had because he's drank himself into a stupor at home. Better safe there than out on those icy roads." There was the casual reminder that the conditions outside weren't the greatest, and Frederick hoped that something would be said about it.

Instead, he was graced with Chrom picking up on a different aspect of what he'd just told him. "Of course he won't be out on the roads if he's been drinking, man's been working as a freelance officer for most of his life, he knows the laws better than most, even if he delivers them in broken language."

"Wait, you two made a list?" Robin sounded like he couldn't believe that aspect of what had been said, which was again not what Frederick had been hoping was going to be listened to. "When was this and why was I never asked to put my name down on it? Did someone else do it for me?"

"We were discussing what your plans for your children tonight were when I wrote your name down on your behalf, do you not remember this?" Considering attempting again a lost cause, Frederick decided he was going to just follow along with the parts of discussion that everyone else was interested in. "I did the same for Chrom, but you two and myself are the only ones I signed up for attending. Everyone else did of their own accord, or they refused to sign up for their personal reasons."

Robin still looked like he didn't believe what was being said, but he accepted it nonetheless. "I must've not been paying attention, you know how I lose focus on things sometimes if I'm not the one with my hands on it. Let's just hope he's okay, if he did in fact say he was coming but then never show up."

"He's not the one I'd be worried with, saying he'd attend or not. He's an experienced man, he knows how to handle a holiday season alone." Shifting how he was standing so that he looked more comfortable with his stance, Chrom looked up towards the ceiling—and without him having to say another word, Frederick knew exactly who he was about to mention, and he had to silently pray that he wasn't going to say anything about what he knew that he was keeping secret. "I understand _why_ they didn't want to be here tonight, but I can't help but worry that it's not a good idea."

Robin wasn't as clued-in as Frederick was, and so he didn't have absolute certainty on who it was Chrom was speaking of. However, he wasn't exactly ignorant to how things worked around the station, so he went out on a limb with his guess anyway. "Who, Vaike and Sully? Yeah, something tells me that, given their history of things going wrong when they're away from the group as a whole, that they'll end up regretting not being here."

"Not just that, I don't think they could have come even if they had wanted to. At least, not together." Chrom tilted his head back down, shaking it as he did. "One or neither of them, not both, not unless they were going to drop Kjelle off with someone for the first time and come spend time together without her."

"That's absurd, they'd never do that to her. After everything? I'm sure parting with her even for a few hours would run the risk of everything falling apart for them." How odd it was that it was Robin making those comments, yet that was more or less exactly what Frederick knew to have happened to the two? "Even when they've thought that it would be best for just one of them to do something, they've made it both so they could keep her with them."

"Are you saying that you wouldn't have done the same for your, er, first-borns?" Frederick asked, trying to sound natural as he did. The look of surprise Robin gave him made him realize that it was awfully weird, hearing that question come from him, someone who had left their first-born somewhere and let fate ruin things almost immediately. "You and Sumia both never left your girls until they were much older than a couple months old, correct?"

"Yes, but, I fail to see the relevance of that point here. What we did, and what Chrom and Olivia did when their children were young, and what you and Maribelle did, that's all different. We all led different kinds of lives than those two. They have had incident after incident happen when they're separated, whether from everyone else or from each other. Might I remind you that—" Robin stepped closer towards where Frederick stood, looking calm but sounding like he was getting heated, so Chrom stuck a hand out to stop him before he could approach any more than he had. "—what, we're just having some friendly discussion about those two, do you take issue with that?"

"I take issue that you're arguing about this, yes. We're not going to stand around chiding anyone's parenting styles, as everyone raised their children the way they wanted to. Besides, what they want to do tonight is completely up to them. If they want to spend the entire holiday together, from beginning to end, that is their decision. I'd respect it if either of you wanted to do the same." Chrom looked between his two companions, seeing them loosen up and become less tense with every word he said. "With that, let's not keep talking about them and move on to bigger and better things, okay? There's got to be something else pressing we can discuss while we're all here together."

Frederick knew that what Chrom was doing was for the best, but he couldn't help but think that Robin had gotten a read on what he was hiding and was trying to draw it out of him. That secret was going to stay just that, secret, for as long as he could keep it, and he was thankful that they were being pushed away from continuing the topic. Even as they moved on to work-related discussions, skirting around speaking of the weather outside but choosing to talk about what poor souls were going to have to head home in the snow to come back in the morning for their shift, he couldn't shake the idea that his defense of his friends had almost blown the cover he'd been told to make for them.

What a shame, then, that the cover was flimsy at best and was going to be blown the moment everyone got to leave the party.

* * *

It was nothing short of a miracle that these girls got along with the boys they were playing with. There was no denying that Morgan was bossy and hard to get along with, her favorite target being her twin sister Cynthia, and together the two of them had caused a lot of trouble for the other children at the house in the past. Morgan had pushed Inigo down several flights of stairs over the years, and Cynthia had done her fair share of teasing and being mean just to get her way when her sister wasn't involved with something.

They were ignoring whatever it was the two kids who lived in the house were doing (Cynthia had seen them head into the other room what had to have been an hour ago and they'd never come back, not even when Lissa went upstairs), and were instead playing dolls with the three boys still there with them. O'wain, being the youngest of the three, was causing the most issue with what they were doing, putting doll heads in his mouth and ripping clothing off the dolls simply because he could, yet they were both patient with him in explaining that he needed to be nice and gentle with their toys. He wasn't understanding what they were telling him, clearly, but it was always worth a shot to teach him a lesson.  
The other two boys, Brady and Freddy, they were doing as they always did and playing in conjunction with one another, keeping to themselves unless one of the girls actively asked to play with them. As the girls had learned over time, that was the best way to handle them, because too much involvement in what they were doing and they would get overwhelmed and start crying, which neither of them wanted to deal with. "Say, that's a nice doll you've got there, Brady!" Cynthia chirped, noticing which of her dolls he had in his hand. "Do you like playing with her? She's a ninja princess who's also a lawyer, she's everything I'd want to be rolled into one!"

"She's nice, I s'pose," he replied, not looking at who was talking to him because he was fixated with the very doll he was being asked about. "I like her hair, it reminds me of my ma's hair."

"I can see that, totally!" Leaning in close to pretend like she was having to look harder, Cynthia giggled when he raised the doll and whacked her in the face with it. "Ooh, you're lucky she's got all that curly hair, that would've hurt if she didn't!"

"I hit you?" He sounded distraught as he took in what she'd said, and for a moment after she told him that he hadn't, that he'd merely brushed her nose with the doll, it was like everything was going to be okay. Then he blinked and the tears were welling up in his eyes, and she was rushing to have to calm him down before he started crying.

In the process of trying to calm him, though, she must have hugged him for a second too long or something because sitting next to him, Freddy threw his doll at the wall and fell backwards, screaming the whole way down. "I wanna get hugs too!" he yelled, worrying Cynthia because she wasn't going to be able to calm both boys down, and stopping focusing on Brady to help his younger brother was going to distress him further.

"Screaming boys don't get hugs," Morgan snapped, looking up from the doll whose short hair she'd been diligently cutting even shorter. "Stop your whining before miss Lissa comes in to stop it for you."

The threat didn't work, judging by how the screams turned to loud crying, but it was enough to get O'wain to set his doll down carefully and run to the upset boy's side, his face contorted as he was deep in thought. "No-no, no bad," he said, using what few words he had a solid grasp on to try and get a point across, but when he was ignored he turned violent and started smacking on the crying boy, repeating his statement with every smack. That was when Morgan took action, rolling her eyes as she stood up and pulled O'wain away from the other boy, dragging him from the room they were in over to the base of the stairs.

"Go on, go up there and get your lazy mom to come down here," she told him, letting go of him with a push towards the first step. "She's got to be the one to make him stop crying, I bet his mommy's paying her lots of money for watching him tonight."

O'wain knew that he was being told to go up the stairs, and he heard something about moms or mommies so he knew that going up there was going to result in him finding his mom, but other than that, what he was doing wasn't very clear to him. So up the stairs he went, turning to look back at Morgan every few steps, her waving for him to continue going up rather than wasting his time looking at her. Eventually, when he made it to the top, it became a game of figuring out which room up there was the one he was looking for, but he had time to go through the rooms, each one a new adventure for his growing mind.

"Something tells me I should have gone up with him," Morgan grumbled, no longer seeing the dark-haired boy at the top of the stairs. She shrugged it off, figuring she could take action against the screaming child on the floor in another way; with that in mind, she walked to where her twin had insisted she'd last seen Lucina go. If anyone was going to be able to stop that crying, and it wasn't Lissa, then Lucina was the best option.

Upon her entering the side living room, Inigo jumped to his feet and ran to meet her in the doorway, trying to stop her every step. "Hey, you cannot be in here, too many people might overwhelm her," he said to justify what he was doing, which was holding his arms out as wide as he could to block her movement. "You've got to be respectful of our guest, Morgan, you just have to be."

"What guest? I thought that me and Cyn and those boys were the guests." Bobbing and weaving to try and get around him, Morgan eventually just pushed him out of the way, sending him stumbling backwards but thankfully not tripping over anything. With him no longer as a distraction, she was able to see that Lucina was holding something—or rather, someone—and she gasped. "Oh my _gods_ is that a baby? Whose baby is it? Can I hold it?"

"I love you Morgan, but I don't think I want to let you hold her." Lucina looked up from where she'd been transfixed by the baby's sleeping face, shaking her head at the girl. "I can't let something happen to her and then we all get in serious trouble for it. Her parents aren't people we want to have mad at us."

Not wanting to take no for an answer, Morgan dropped to her knees at Lucina's side and closed in on the sleeping baby, her eyes going wide when she recognized who she was looking at. "Wait, what's Kjelle doing here? My mom's going to be so jealous if she finds out I got to see her by myself and she hasn't gotten to yet!"

"Miss Maribelle dropped her off, Auntie Lissa's not super happy about it and that's why Inigo and I are watching her right now," Lucina explained, rocking the girl in her arms slowly. "I'm glad I know how to watch babies, from watching O'wain a few times, but I wish my aunt would help out too. I want to have fun with my friends."

"I'll watch her for you instead, I swear I'll be gentle with her!" Morgan was trying not to yell but she was rather excited, and when she got excited her voice started to get loud, which resulted in the baby coming awake and starting to squirm in Lucina's arms. "Oops, I mean, now she's awake because of me so you have to let me watch her, right?"

"I get to watch her first," Inigo claimed, having brought himself into the mix after his near-fall at Morgan's hands. "I've been in here as long as Lucy has, and I've known her as long as Lucy has, which is longer than you've known her. If someone who isn't Lucy's watching her, it's going to be me."

Morgan looked up at the boy, standing over them all looking as intimidating as he could manage, and she smiled at him, picking herself up off the ground to meet him in a deadlock over his sister and the baby she was holding. "I don't think so, you're just an icky boy, and what do icky boys know about babies? I've gotten to watch her before, but her parents were there when I did so it wasn't like this, I think I get to watch her if Lucy doesn't want to."

"I'd appreciate it if you two didn't start arguing right now," Lucina remarked, but her words were too little, too late, as they were breaking out into a war of words, trying to make the other admit that they weren't worthy of getting to watch Kjelle. "Okay, cool, focus on fighting rather than, I don't know, actually helping me watch her! She's never going to stop crying if everyone's yelling around her!"

Back upstairs, O'wain had made it to the last bedroom up there and was pushing the door open, allowing for the ambient sound of two children crying to waft into the room. "What's going on down there?" Lissa asked herself, picking herself up off the bed and stepping down off of it, almost trampling her son underfoot in the process. Had she not heard his proud cry of "Mama!" she most definitely would have harmed him in some way, but at the last moment before impact he called out and she froze, looking down to see him there. "Goodness, O'wain! What are you doing up here? Hasn't your dear uncle yelled at you enough about coming up the stairs by yourself?"

Puffing his cheeks out in the pride that filled him, O'wain gave a single laugh with that held-in breath. "Bad ba-a-by," he told his mother, which she took as him making a remark on the shriller of the two sets of screams she could hear coming from downstairs. Just the idea that he'd gone into that room and seen that child made her stomach turn, and she rushed out of the bedroom to go down to investigate, but not before picking O'wain up so she could carry him back downstairs with her.

"I don't want you to be playing with that bad baby," she scolded, as they went down the stairs. He was predictably confused, as the person he had in mind was someone she'd been trying to get him to play with every time they saw him, but he wasn't able to articulate that confusion without making things worse (by repeating the sole modifier that he was talking about a baby of sorts). When they got to the main floor and she turned to the living room, rather than where the kids were playing, he was even more confused, waving his arm in the direction she was supposed to have been going and yelling for her to go that way. In order to be heard over all the crying going on in the house, she had to loudly ask, "What are you doing, O'wain? I've got to shut the bad baby up."

At the sound of Lissa's voice getting closer, Morgan and Inigo's argument came to a screeching halt. "You know what, I'm fine with not being the one to hold her next, I don't want to be seen in here with you two anyway," Morgan said, backing away but quickly realizing that her chances of escaping the room before Lissa got there were slim to none. She sighed when she saw Inigo stick his tongue out at her, him accepting victory even though it had been more or less a mutual choice to stop fighting. "Seriously? Your aunt's going to be so mad at your behavior."

"Like she's going to care," he retorted, but when she came to the doorway and saw him looking obnoxious at the other girl he was immediately scolded for how he was acting. That led him to feign kicking his sister (and by extension the baby she was calming down), which resulted in more scolding as Lissa sat O'wain down, despite the boy being insistent that she was in the wrong place.

"What in Naga's name is going on in here, you three?" she asked, trying not to have to look at the source of the crying in that room. "Why are you all acting like you are? Don't you know how to behave when your parents aren't around?"

No one wanted to be the one to say that they'd been fighting over who got to take care of the child next, and Lucina was too busy making sure the crying was stopping to have the time to get a word in. Before Lissa could say anything further, though, O'wain grabbed onto one of her legs and looked straight at the only person at the house younger than he was, and his eyes lit up in excitement. "Ooh, baby!" he called, letting go of his mother to run forward, but she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him back. "Mama, look! Baby!"

"Wait, this isn't the 'bad baby' you were talking about?" Surprised that she'd made a wrong assumption, Lissa let go of O'wain for a moment, but when he started charging towards Lucina and Kjelle again, she had to grab onto him and pull him up off the ground so that she could hold him once more. "Come on, O'wain, we're going to go deal with the _actual_ child you were telling me about."

In the wake of her turning and walking out of the room without solving any issues beyond the two kids fighting, Lucina found it within her to look up at where her aunt was walking away and mockingly mouth everything she'd just said; this was seen by the other two children and they started laughing. "Wow, Lucy, I had no idea you'd do that," Inigo said, trying to stifle his laughs just in case Lissa got suspicious of what had happened when she went to leave. "That's almost as bad as doing that to one of our parents."

"I do that all the time to my parents, especially my father," Morgan added, her laughter coming as a surprise because of that fact. "It's great when they catch you doing it and they think it's funny too, but it's not so great when you were getting punished and they don't think anything you do is funny right then."

"You're acting like I ever get in trouble with my parents." Sounding offended that she would have even suggested such a thing, Inigo looked to the doorway to see that his aunt was long gone, before laughing loudly. "Ha! That's right, I'm better than you because unlike you, I happen to be a good kid!"

"A good kid who's going to make Kjelle start screaming again if he doesn't shut up," Lucina said, sounding unamused to have to make the reminder. It hushed her brother, although it did make Morgan laugh and give her own snarky remark. "You too, I'm not going to think about trying to punish you because we're both just kids, but can't you behave?"

Morgan was taken aback by the bluntness of the question, and she looked to Lucina in silence as she thought about how she could answer. "I guess I can, I don't know, it's normally Cyn who does the behaving and me who does the misbehaving. I'm my parents' problem child, always have been and always will be."

"Funny, I'm sure if my parents were asked about which one of us was the problem child, they'd point to Inigo without hesitation, but he at least knows how to knock it off and act decent every once in a while." Now Lucina was getting heated, still unamused that she was having to calm a child that was still fussing in her arms. The bluntness in her voice was enough to make the two kids there fall silent, pondering their individual thoughts about how to proceed in the current conversation, and just when she was about to thank them for stopping their talking so that the baby would fully calm down, someone came running in through the doorway, making a beeline straight for where she was sitting.

"Baby!" O'wain shrieked, having to be tackled down by both Morgan and Inigo, who jumped to prevent him from getting to where Kjelle was being held. "Aww, baby p'ease?"

"How'd he get away from Auntie Lissa?" Inigo asked, while Morgan calmly told the boy he needed to be quiet, unless he wanted to hear screaming. "She's normally got him right in her sights, and I don't see or hear her coming back. What do you think he did?"

"He probably took advantage of her getting around to fixing what went wrong in the other room," Morgan replied, thinking about the scene she'd left before coming into the living room. "I mean, Freddy was crying and I think Brady was about to be too, that's two kids and two hands that she needs to fix things."

Lucina gave an exasperated sigh, seeing her cousin trying to worm his way out of how he was being pinned down. "Okay, that's great and all, but unless you two want to risk hurting him and making him cry, he's gonna get to me and Kjelle anyway, and then what? Then we get to deal with him hurting her and then Auntie Lissa coming back and getting mad that he got near her and—"

Just as she'd been talking about what would happen, O'wain broke away from the hands holding him to the floor and he completed his approach to Lucina's side, but rather than causing issue and being the general nuisance she assumed he would be, he merely sat right down next to her and rested his head against Kjelle's. "Ba-a-aby," he said, moving his head gently so it rubbed against hers. "Hi baby."

"—oh, well, that's not what I thought was going to happen." The tenderness had taken them all by surprise, and since it didn't seem to be bothering the baby involved there was absolutely no reason to let all hell break loose and put a stop to it. If someone (in specific, Lissa) was going to end what was happening, they'd have to be the one to fix things when they inevitably went wrong again. It was only a matter of time until she came in to see what was happening, and that meant the minutes of calm and silence the kids had were numbered. Without words, just by looking at each other and nodding, the three older children made a pact that they weren't going to lose the silence they had unless it was against their will. For the sake of something as important as a lack of screaming, they could put their differences aside and get along, if even for just a little while. The sight of the two youngest children in the house leaned together and being gentle and calm was enough to make them not want to continue the arguments that never seemed to end.

The problem was, they all knew it was going to end the moment the lone adult present came back; it was just a matter of when that would be.

* * *

 **A/N: And so, the three plotlines of the story have been established in their entirety, but we still have a long way to go before there's any resolution to anything. just, uh, lemme know what you like, hm? c:**


	4. Shattered and Destroyed

Nights out on the farm in the middle of blizzards turned into early ones, not because there wasn't anything to do but rather because the house had a tendency to lose power and no one felt it was safe to have multiple candles or fire-lit lamps burning with children running around. The outage thankfully waited until after they'd gathered for and finished with dinner to take place, but when it suddenly darkened in the house and the only active light source was the still-bright outdoors with the raging snowstorm, the only people bothered by it were the two that weren't supposed to still be there.

"So do one of you have to go out and restart a generator or something?" Sully asked, thinking about what had to be done when similar situations took place at the horse camp. "If you do, I'll join you. Have to know how to take care of what you've got, you know."

"No, there's no power source here, we'll be without power until the storm passes." Panne didn't sound like she was worried at all about what she was saying, even though it was concerning to people who didn't live the same life she did. "Owning and maintaining a generator would disturb life as we know it here, it's for the best that we remain without one here, but I assure you that we won't go cold or hungry in the meantime."

"Since we have guests, does this mean we can stay up later?" Asking rather eagerly, Yarne looked excitedly at his mother, his siblings at his side nodding their heads as they agreed with him, but when she shut the idea down with a firm shake of her head, he sighed, before coming up with a loophole. "But we're all gonna be in the same room, so us kids can stay up as late as we want, right?"

"I suppose, it's not like we are going to supervise you once the bedroom door is shut tightly, but do you really want to be up longer when you'll have to be up early to start on chores that will be made much harder without power?" The simultaneous groans the children made at mention of chores made Panne laugh, but she was entirely serious about what she said and they all knew it.

That wasn't going to stop them from trying again, however. "But Ma, what if we wanna talk to our guests to know them better? I think that should be allowed," Sil said, both of her brothers now nodding along with her. "We don't get to see guests very much, and we kinda-sorta know these ones already, so better is best!"

"Why can'tcha kids just listen t'your ma every once in a while, why is it that y'all are always fightin' with her when she makes rules?" Donny glanced at Panne, who had gone stone-faced when he said his first word in her defense, before looking at the three children who were trying to fight their way to a later bedtime. "She's sayin' you're gettin' off'ta bed early, that means you're doin' it. Guests or no guests, unless…"

Although he hadn't asked it, it was implied that the final decision was to come to the guests themselves, and that was a lot of pressure to suddenly have thrown at someone, even if they weren't actually bothered by the presence of the children. But if it were really up to them, they were faced with either siding with the kids and being their favorite people, or siding with Panne and not upsetting or even angering her. "Sorry, but rules are rules, and we aren't gonna be the ones sayin' you can break those," Vaike told the kids, hoping he wasn't going to get yelled at by them for it. "But y'know what, we'll make sure we stay for a little while tomorrow so ya can spend some time with us before we leave, how 'bout that?"

It wasn't what the children wanted, but it was better than being treated like they didn't exist at all. "You promise that?" Yarne asked, trepidation in his voice. "We don't want to be being lied to about this, you know…"

"They wouldn't lie to us, that'd be mean. Let's just go get cleaned up so we can go to bed." Sil was first to push away from the table everyone was still gathered around, and after feeling like she was right and that they weren't being duped, Yarne followed her, but it wasn't until Panne got up to put the youngest in bed that the last child went as well; her leaving, if even for a short time, left a silent void there that wasn't easily filled until she returned, her face twisted in some kind of thought that was only visible thanks to the still-bright outdoors.

No one drew attention to what she was doing until after she'd disappeared again and returned with a few candles and a matchbook to light them with. "I figured we could use some more light than what's coming in through the windows," she said as she took her seat once again. "Speaking at a table like this with friends in the dark feels more ominous than it should, even though we've had to do it many a time."

"One 'a them perks 'bout this farm, we get t'be livin' in the dark whenever it gets stormy! If ol' Ma were here, she'd be laughin' 'bout how we're even relyin' on candles right now." Leaning back in his chair, Donny gave a drawn-out sigh, stroking his chin for a moment. "I miss her more and more every day, can't wait 'til she comes back from seein' the world like she is, it's been too long since we last saw her 'round here."

"There's no need to dwell on what she's doing right now, Donnel, we're in the presence of company and I am positive they have no interest in your mother's whereabouts." Panne was entirely right, as she normally was, but before anyone could give her even a silent thanks for what she'd just done, she was moving on in the conversation. "There are still a few hours before the time you two normally go to bed, judging by how you acted in the comfort of your own home, so is there anything you would like to do to pass the time?"

The room was starting to smell like smoke and wax, from the candles burning, and while they were providing some light at the table it wasn't the same as if they had actual electricity at the moment. "I don't know, but do you really think this storm's going to pass overnight or whatever?" Her question was blunt, but this wasn't the situation Sully had wanted to be in right then and she wanted out whenever she could. Her husband was making deals with children to stay around longer, yet all she wanted was to get home. "We've got to get back at some point tomorrow, we can't stay away from Kjelle forever."

"I understand that, but you also cannot drive recklessly into a blizzard and hope to survive. It should pass by daybreak but there's no guarantee on that. Being separated from your child like this must be so hard on you, but…" Panne propped her elbows up on the table, her head resting on her hands. "Keep in mind that other parents do it too, and willingly. If you're half as strong as you claim to be, this should be an easy task for you to power through."

Hearing that was similar to being slapped across the face, it hurt and it was uncalled for, but at the end of the day it was drastic enough that it had to be deserved. "You're right, except for the part where I've never once claimed to be strong about this. My strength's for other damn things, from other damn things, it never had anything to do with having a kid and being a mother. I'm nowhere near as strong mentally as I am physically, I'm just not. This is all new to me."

"I suppose you wish that your first long separation came on your own terms, hm?" The question was asked despite Panne already knowing the answer, as anyone would have been able to guess that she was correct. "It's bothersome that your struggles come directly because you chose to help me out rather than leave me to find a different way home, but I am positive that you'll find a way to handle this suffering. You've always been rather strong about everything you face, haven't you? Or is that another thing that accident changed?"

That set of questions wasn't as easy to answer as the first, obvious one had been, and even as they moved on to happier topics of conversation Sully was left struggling to find an answer to that within herself. She wasn't going to let Panne get the last word on her strength, even though they were vastly different people they shared two common threads that bound them together: being police officers, and being mothers, both of which were jobs that required a lot of heart and soul out of them, as well as strength. And while she wouldn't say she wasn't as strong of a person as she was a year beforehand (in fact, if she had to say anything she would have said she was stronger), she also wouldn't say that she knew how to stay strong when it came to issues regarding her child.

Thankfully, the conversation stayed as far away as it could from the topic of children, up until there was a whining from one of the bedrooms and Panne had to excuse herself to check on who was being disruptive. With her gone, the men broke off into their own talks about work-related things, both of the police and the farming types, and it left Sully there to either participate in their conversation, or to find something else to do. She could have gone to follow Panne to watch her tend to one of her kids, but she chose to head off to the bedroom that had been converted for them during their stay, not saying anything to either of the men as she left. The one of them that cared about her would follow her soon enough, so there was no point in distracting him from what he was doing.

The bedroom was cold, not entirely the fault of their being no power in the house, but that had to have a large part of it. With two small beds as the only sleeping places in the room, it wasn't plausible for sharing body heat to be a way to keep warm, but she was surprised to find that each bed was covered in large blankets that would do wonders at keeping the draft out all night. "Reminds me a lot of the cabin up at the camp," she remarked as she pulled the blankets back on the bed closer to the window, the spot she chose only so because she wanted to know right away when morning came and she'd need the natural light. "Except up there we had actual power and a bed we could both sleep in, but whatever. Wonder how the place is doing, haven't been up there since…"

Her voice went silent when she remembered when, exactly that last time had been, and she was left asking herself how she was going to proceed with those thoughts as she crawled into the bed, the mattress tiny and uncomfortable but somewhere to sleep. It was all connected, everything that had happened there that day, and it all went back to that last time she'd been at the horse camp. But even before that, it was all connected to that fateful day, exactly one year beforehand, where two lives changed forever with the simple asking of one question.

 _And they sure changed, for better or for worse._

There hadn't been any other options—she was going to say yes no matter what, whether there was a crowd watching or whether the proposal was somewhere private, like it ended up being. The reality of everything sank in the following day, when people's questions weren't what they got each other for the holiday but rather when they were going to go ahead and get married, they'd been waiting so long to get together in the first place that they simply couldn't wait forever for that.

It'd been a mutual decision to not have a ceremony, but what came as a surprise was how they were both thinking about how they wanted to get married right away. The suggestion still rang through her ears from time to time when she looked at the ring on her finger, or when she'd look at Vaike and see him looking at his own, how he'd pulled her aside just a few days later and told her they should go and get married right then, so that nothing could go wrong to stop it from happening. There was a happiness, a youthful eagerness, in his eyes that she couldn't ignore, and she knew that it was because he'd finally found it inside of him to move past what had gone wrong before, but at the cost of wanting what he now had to work out as well as it could, as fast as it could. Like with the proposal, she wasn't going to deny him what he wanted, on the single condition that even if they got married, she wouldn't have to succumb to the traditional "wife" roles, that she wouldn't have to take his name and cater to his every need all the time.

It wasn't even a week after they'd gotten engaged that they went ahead and got married, and there wasn't a single thing wrong with that choice. He was her first real love, the first person she'd considered giving herself to that actually meant something, and she was the person who'd been there to bring him out of the bad places his previous romance had put him. They weren't perfect together, but they weren't perfect separate either; what they had was what was best for them in their minds, and they were going to run with it as far as they could, as long as they could.

Just thinking about that, about their rushed "wedding" that she hadn't had to put a lick of planning into, made Sully smile as she laid there in that bed, the light from the window illuminating the still-empty second bed in the room. If he were in there, she would have asked him to reminisce with her, but judging by how she could still hear the occasional laugh from outside the room he was still deep in conversation with Donny and possibly Panne, something that she could have gone back to if she wasn't trying to work everything out inside of her. How had they gotten from there, from the newly-wedded bliss, to being parents separated from their baby in under a year?

That was entirely and completely her fault, she was the one who let one too many conversations about children get to her on a deep level, and she was the one who casually threw out the suggestion that they bite the bullet and have a child so that there'd be someone in the world to carry on their memories. It wasn't that motherhood was appealing to her, or that she thought they'd make good parents, it was entirely that she wanted them to have a legacy to leave behind that didn't involve good deeds or the jobs that they held. She wanted there to be someone out there who would be able to talk about the great things they'd done in their lives, and have a personal reason to do so.

The process of having a child didn't scare her, it wasn't going to be fun but by no means was it going to be something that she regretted signing herself up for once it happened. And when it did happen, rather than the world coming screeching to a halt at the revelation that they were having a child, everyone seemed genuinely happy for them, thrilled that after years of heartbreak and longing and being ignorant to the feelings of the person closest to them, they were together and starting a family that they deserved. Beyond that reaction, everything was business as normal, and it would remain as so until things needed to change.

But that was where Sully being herself made everything difficult, and she fully owned up to that reality. She didn't want to have to change anything, she wanted to keep living her life exactly as she had (except for things that were willingly changed to accommodate for her new life direction), and if that meant still working normal shifts and volunteering to cover the horse camp for the summer yet again, that was what she was going to do and no one, not even her dearest husband who loved her very much, was going to change that.

The room felt like it was a lot colder and emptier than it had as she lay there, reminding herself that if she hadn't been so insistent on still being herself, things would have ended differently than they ended up being. She shouldn't have ever decided that she could keep up her everyday life as she'd always lived it, she should have taken all the breaks she could have and let things pass her by, for once in her life. But instead, she pushed herself harder than she had needed to, and she paid the price for it in the end.

It wasn't even three months before when she'd decided that she was going to see if anyone wanted to come visit her up at the camp, where she was staying alone for a few weeks while the owners went off vacationing and still debating whether or not they were going to really give the place up. (They were leaning towards going through with it, and as far as she still knew they hadn't changed their minds yet.) The only person who accepted the offer without hesitation was Panne, who thought that bringing her children to learn how to ride tamed and friendly horses, as opposed to ones that were used to working with heavy farm machinery, would be a great use of her time.

Everything would have been fine if one of the kids hadn't spooked the horse he was riding and gotten stuck holding onto its saddle for dear life as it charged through the valley, not knowing what was going on. It would have all turned out okay if she hadn't decided that, to keep the situation from getting worse, she'd climb onto a horse and chase it down, calming it through her presence. What happened after she got on her favorite horse and started following the rampaging one was something she didn't remember, and something she'd been told about over and over again, by the people who saw it and by the person who'd been the first to hear what had happened.

She'd been thrown off the back of a horse many times, and every time before she'd picked herself up, dusted herself off, and gotten right back on; this time, though, there wasn't a chance for that as the horse she was chasing happened to kick her as she was catching her breath from the fall, hitting her right in the head and knocking her out cold for some amount of time. The next thing she remembered after that was going back to the camp after being stuck in the hospital for what had to have been days, so that she could get her things she'd taken to the camp with her and go home.

That car ride back to the camp would forever remain in her mind as one of those moments that she wished she could take back and re-do, as even though she'd never thought of herself as a mother that was her first actual time she could recall _being_ one. A child she'd asked for because she wanted something to outlive her in case things went horribly wrong in her life, and her first memory with that child was a definite amount of time after birth. Of course, she had the right to joke about how she couldn't say if it was a horrible experience or not, but that came at the price of remembering nothing of those first days of her daughter's life.

Feelings of regret for the current situation came flooding over her, as she pulled the covers over her head and tried to block out the light still coming into the window. She had wanted to spend the night at home with Kjelle, making good family memories for her first Christmas, and now that wasn't going to happen. It was another experience with her child that she wasn't going to have any memories to look back on, something that would linger with her forever, most likely.

"Hey, are y'still awake in here?" Vaike asked as he opened the door to come into the room, looking to see that one bed was empty and the other had blankets covering it entirely. "If you're not that's okay, I guess, but I was hopin' that…" He stopped talking while he closed the door, figuring that maybe the silence he was receiving was because of it being opened. "I was hopin' that we could talk a bit 'bout what's happened."

"I don't think I want to talk right now." It was all she could bring herself to say, her emotions smothering her to the point that if she said more she might have started crying. Her, one of the strongest women most people back home knew, crying because she felt horrible about what she'd done.

The last year had taught her a lot about what she could and couldn't do, and being invincible to all sorts of pain just wasn't possible anymore.

* * *

Maribelle was surprised she hadn't gotten any phone calls to distrupt from her conversation with Olivia and Sumia, even though the silence she was receiving was more concerning than it needed to be. She knew Lissa was responsible most of the time, but what if she'd decided this was the night where she slipped on those responsibilities and failed her? A lot was resting on their shoulders at the moment, and she was almost tempted to go call Lissa herself to make sure that everything was fine, not with her own children but with the extra one she'd dropped off. As far as anyone there knew (minus herself and Frederick), there were supposed to only be seven kids under Lissa's care at Chrom's house, and that eighth child was to be at home with her parents. They weren't aware of the situation that had unfolded, and they had no idea that Maribelle had entrusted a child into the care of someone who wouldn't exactly like that child.

Even though, as she thought about it, there was no reason for Lissa to actively dislike Kjelle because she was pretty sure everything had been settled and cleared between all adults involved. And if Lissa had any issues, she would have called by then, most definitely. "Something's on your mind right now, Maribelle," Sumia pointed out, causing Maribelle to take in a sharp breath at the surprise of being addressed. "We're all friends here, you can tell us anything and we won't judge. Right, everyone?"

The "everyone" she was addressing wasn't just Olivia, but Cordelia and Gaius as well, and back behind them it was clear that Miriel was listening in on what was being said, a content smile on her face. "Oh yes, definitely. We are all capable of keeping secrets for one another without any judgment," Olivia said in agreement, nodding happily. "Maribelle, you shouldn't feel like you need to keep quiet with us, we listen and don't tell."

"You say that now, but trust me, if you knew what I was thinking about you'd be all over telling everyone you could. And, apologies if this sounds rude, but I don't feel comfortable telling secrets when an actual criminal is around." She looked at Gaius, who gave her a dirty look in return. "Why else would they force someone like poor Cordelia to bring you as a date every year in order to be allowed into this event?"

"Cordelia brings me because she's into me," he replied, not backing down on the dirtiness of his look, even when Cordelia sighed and tried leaning away from him. "Besides, I'm not the one here who's got loose lips that'll tell everyone everything. That'd be you, if all the rumors I hear from everyone are true."

Hearing that offended Maribelle slightly, but she knew it to be true. "Hm, I may be a queen of gossip myself, but when someone entrusts me with a secret I make sure to not spill it unless the price is right. Unlike you, you could be offered a piece of candy and you'd get to talking, isn't that true?"

"I think I'd rather you two not talk to each other like this," Olivia tried cutting in with, but her voice was too soft to make much of an impact, and so she was left staring between the two as they continued exchanging jabs at one another.

"I'm not that easy to buy off, and besides, my days of being bought off 'easily' are long past me. I've grown some standards, I've learned how to be a decent person, and most of all…" Gaius stood up, towering over everyone who was still sitting, and he started approaching Maribelle with his shoulders arched out to make him look more physically imposing. "I've grown a lot more than you could ever say you have. Ever."

"I'll have you know that I've grown too, I've been through a lot in the past couple years that has changed my perspective on life and how things work!" She wasn't lying, because ever since her stunt at the horse camp the previous summer she'd been having to work to get her life back into order like she wanted it. Between marriage counseling and parenting classes, as well as the expectation that she not make any mistakes like the one she'd made by staying in Ferox when she shouldn't have, a lot of things had happened to make her mature and grow up. Even with that in mind, though, she couldn't shake the reality that she had gone back and made a bad decision that was good for her and her family but for no one else involved, something she'd been trying so hard not to do.

The self-reflection she was doing was visible in her face, in how her eyes were shifting as she considered her actions of both past and present, and Gaius smirked at the expression she was making, but before he could say anything Sumia jumped to her feet and put her hands on his shoulders, a large, forced smile on her face. "I have an idea! I baked some pies for tonight and you can be my taste-tester for them before I start giving them to everyone else, how about that? Would you like that?"

He may have just said he wasn't able to be bought off easily anymore, but the mere mention of pies made Gaius' eyes light up, all signs of him being angry with Maribelle erased as easily as that. Sumia was able to lead him away, and as they left the area she received a thankful nod from one person and one person only: Cordelia, who sighed in relief once Gaius was out of her sight. "I cannot _believe_ he's roping me into being his date again, and all because he's a bit jealous of a certain someone else!" she said, wiping her brow to brush hair off her forehead. "Tonight I expected to get to spend some time with someone else, but with him around it's next to impossible."

"Who's the lucky guy?" Olivia asked, not seeing Miriel duck out from her hiding spot at what she'd heard Cordelia say. "Ooh, wait, don't tell me, I think we all know who it is. But is he really here tonight? None of us have seen him."

"He's locked himself in his office, I think he might have seen Gaius hanging around me and gotten disheartened by it. You both have heard stories of how Stahl gets when it comes to ladies, he doesn't know how to handle when a different guy makes a move on them." She sighed again, less relieved than the first time. "I hope he doesn't think I'm trying to play games with him, I really do want to get to know him better and more personally than I already do. Maybe some dates or something."

"That'll be great for him, he deserves someone like you in his life." If there was anyone who could always be gentle and inspirational in a situation, it was Olivia, and her pure happiness for what Cordelia was saying was quite obvious. "Maybe if he opens up to the idea, you can bring him over for dinner with our family some time, we'd be more than happy to have you both there with us."

Thankful for the offer, Cordelia happily accepted it, and the two of them continued speaking on the matter, her lovesickness and Olivia's understanding something positive for Maribelle to listen to as she tried ignoring the thoughts flooding her mind. She had done something very, very wrong and it was beginning to catch up to her, and all she felt like she should have been doing in that moment was calling Lissa and asking her what was going on. Getting up and interrupting the conversation happening by stepping away would be far too suspicious, and she wouldn't have a reason for her sudden need to leave if she was asked, beyond the actual reason, anyway.

She had to hope that something would come to bail her out of her current predicament, and that came in the form of Miriel's reappearance, following behind her a tall, lanky man who had clearly just been woken up from a nap. She adjusted her glasses as she gave a loud noise to let them know she'd come back, and all three women sitting there looked towards her, but only two of them looked where she motioned to Stahl standing. As they started acting surprised at his appearance, Maribelle made her move to get up and head somewhere more private, but in doing so she had to pass by where they were all looking and that, obviously, didn't work out for her in the end, as evidenced by the soft voice that followed her with, "Oh, Maribelle, is everything okay? You normally don't leave like that."

"Everything's fine, Olivia, don't worry. I just want to call Lissa and see how my boys are doing." It wasn't the full truth, but it was something she would normally say so there was no reason to question a word of it. "I'll just be gone a minute or two, don't worry."

"I'd be careful not to interrupt the men if you encounter any of them. Something seems to have put them all into a state of panic and I would hate for you to make one wrong move and have them lash out at you," Miriel told her, still fixing how her glasses were resting on her face. "They ran past me towards the office Lon'qu is working in tonight when I went to get Stahl, so if you head in that direction be wary of what is going on."

Hearing Lon'qu be mentioned didn't help the unsettling feeling go away, but Maribelle figured that his involvement was merely work-related and had nothing to do with his wife or what she was doing where she currently was. Little did she know, as she sneaked away to the one corner of the station she knew no one who wasn't allowed to know what she was talking about would intrude on her, that she had every right to feel unsettled at what could have been happening.

That was because Lon'qu, getting irritated by all the reports of stranded drivers and impassable roads, had left his office for a moment to let Chrom know what he had heard, and he turned to head back before anything could be said to him. In turn, that had resulted in the mad dash that Miriel had been witness to, which had three men crowding in the doorway of the office Lon'qu had his radios set up in, all of them looking to him for answers. "What do you mean, the roads have gotten to the point of needing the city closed?" Chrom asked, trying to keep his composure as the head of police. "That's not a call anyone makes right away, how long has it been getting bad?"

"All night, not like you would have listened if I said anything before though, if I know you well enough." Lon'qu didn't look up from the reports crossing his desk, even though if he had he would have seen Chrom's jaw drop at the accusation. "The weather reports never indicated it would start getting bad until about now, from what I am currently reading, which means this storm has caught everyone off-guard."

"I did try to warn you of this," Frederick said under his breath, only Robin hearing him and sighing at the reality of what he'd said. When he spoke next, he was talking at a normal volume, and was trying his hardest to not slip into a smug tone because he had been right all along. "But, we're all here now and we need to find a way to get everyone home safely tonight, do we not?"

"Jumping ahead to getting home, I see. I'm still reeling about the fact that he knew about this and didn't tell any of us because he thought we wouldn't listen!" It wasn't a normal occurrence for Chrom to be put in this situation, but he was close to beating his head against the doorframe as he thought about what there was they could do. "Do you think it's possible to make some trips out to take people home, Lon'qu? I'll ask Stahl as well, he's got a car capable of snow travel, but you're the one that's right here, right now."

"I would rather not have to, at least during Feroxi storms we properly prepare all main roads for when the snow falls, whereas here it's slicker and untreated everywhere you go. From what I've heard, if you drive so much as a few feet, you run the risk of going off the road, snow tires or not. As I don't have snow tires, I would be relying on the car's handling, and if the situation is as dire as every other emergency service is saying, that is not enough." With every word Lon'qu spoke, the three men at his door accepted their fate for the night more and more, until he stopped talking and they knew that they were relegated to sleeping at the station overnight, for the second time in five years.

He looked up from the report he was reading and gave a curt nod, which prompted Robin to step forward, pushing past the other two so he was inside the office. "You're acting rather indifferent to this issue, doesn't it bother you that you won't be making it home to your family for the holiday tomorrow?"

"It comes with the job of working the overnight shift the night before, there was always the chance that I would be stuck here if the storm got worse after your holiday party ended." The coldness in his voice never went away, no matter who he was talking to there at the station, but Robin felt like he had been responded to in a way that hadn't been appropriate, and as he opened his mouth to call attention to that, Lon'qu quickly added, "I mean no harm by what I've said, by the way. I offered to work this shift for personal reasons and I don't want any of you thinking I'm angry I may not make it home."

"Indifference hardly indicated anger, but I suppose I can accept what you're saying." Robin bowed his head before stepping back out of the office. "I'll go break the news to the others, this is a horrible situation for so many of us but I think we need to not hide it from everyone forever, if that makes sense."

"I'll join you," Chrom said, also stepping back from the doorway, but before the two of them walked away he did poke his head back into the office to say, "Keep an eye and ear out for any changes in the storm and conditions, if there's a chance we can safely get out of here tonight I want us to take it."

The grunt Lon'qu gave in reply was all that he was going to get, so they left, which meant that it was only Frederick remaining standing there. "I don't mean to pry into your personal life with this question, but something tells me you offered to work this shift _so_ you ran the risk of not going home for the holiday," he suggested, stepping inside for himself so that the conversation didn't feel so confrontational. "You don't have to tell me if I'm right, of course, I am merely spit-balling ideas for why—"

"You're right, I don't want to go home." Lon'qu cut him off and made him fall completely silent, his head tilting in surprise as he listened for what came next. "The holidays in Ylisse aren't the same as they are at home, and I've always hated spending them down here, but it seems I never have a choice in the matter. And now that we live here? I'll never have a fair-weathered Feroxi holiday again, instead I'll be spending them surrounded by family that isn't my own and a child I barely connect with."

"—ahem, that would not be what I was going to assume, but it's good that you've gotten that off of your chest." Drawing the only other chair in the room to pull it so he could sit across the desk from Lon'qu, Frederick straightened his collar as he looked at the dark-haired man already sitting there before taking his seat. "You can feel free to vent at me, I'm sure Chrom and Robin can handle letting everyone else, including Maribelle, know of the change in plans. I have a feeling that you need a listening ear right now more than anything."

All he got in return was silence, Lon'qu having closed his lips tightly so any further words expressing unhappy thoughts wouldn't break loose. It was already going to be a long night if they were really stranded at the station; why not spend it trying to break potential issues out of someone's secretive mind?

* * *

Sitting with a child that wasn't her own sprawled across her lap, Lissa wondered what kind of trouble the other children in the house were causing at that very moment. O'wain had wandered off, but when didn't he when she was busy, and she was sure that if he had done anything wrong someone would have already ran and told her. The other two children where she was were back to playing nicely together with dolls, and all the rest of the kids were still in the other room dealing with that mess she wanted no part of whatsoever.

It was wrong of her to be avoiding handling that child, but the fact remained that she may have settled all the issues with that child's father and she shouldn't have been being so rude about the fact that he'd moved on, just as she had. Her pettiness was rather uncalled for, and she knew it, but no one was around to tell her to knock it off and act her age, to stop pretending a baby didn't exist simply because of who her parents were. "Miss Lissa, can we do something else now?" Cynthia asked, stifling a yawn as she did. "It's gotta be super late, and it's Christmas Eve, so can we make cookies or something? My mom always has us make cookies for Christmas when she doesn't go out."

"Huh? I mean, yeah, I'm sure Olivia's got some cookie dough we could use, or the stuff to make our own, but don't you wanna, I don't know, go home and make cookies there? Your parents shouldn't be gone too much longer if it's supposed to start getting bad out soon." Lissa gently sat the boy on her lap up, and he glared at her for it before getting to his feet and stretching. "Hey now, I'm just making it so I can move if Cynthia really wants to do this cookie thing she's talking about."

"I do, by the way," she replied, putting her doll down. "I love helping make cookies and decorate them, just for Morgan to crush them and eat them."

"Me and Freddy aren't 'llowed to have cookies most times, Ma gets mad when we do," Brady said, hanging his head as he too sat his doll down. "She doesn't like us having cookies unless she says we can, which she never does."

Lissa chuckled, finding what she heard a bit hard to believe, since it was about Maribelle and her questionable parenting style. "I don't know, Brady, she's pretty big on letting people have whatever they want if they ask nicely, or if they cry for it. You have to have cried for cookies at her before, you totally have to have."

"I don't cry at her," he retorted, sniffling as he spoke and rendering his assertion even more unbelievable than what he'd previously said. "But I wanna get cookies now, can we do that, miss Lissa? Can we please?"

That was two children making the request, and she was sure if the third wasn't being a sour brat at the moment he'd have been latching onto his brother's words. She really didn't have any choice but to give it a shot. "I guess we can," she told them as she stood up, stretching her legs as the kids cheered and got up for themselves. "Let's go see if Olivia's got anything we can use, otherwise I guess I can call her and ask if we can get creative and make our own cookie dough."

Together they headed towards the kitchen, but as Lissa sent the kids ahead of her she figured that she could at least check in the other room and see what they were doing. Her head poked around the entryway to see the backs of two kids standing in front of where she figured Lucina was still sitting with that baby, and she wasn't going to call attention to her checking on them until she realized she couldn't see O'wain. If he wasn't in there with his cousins, he was most likely off getting into trouble, and she didn't want to have to put a halt on the cookie-baking in order to find him. She gave a loud whistle to get someone's attention, and two heads turned back to look at her, both Inigo and Morgan going wide-eyed when they saw her in the room.

"Auntie Lissa, nothing's going on here, you can trust us to keep watching Kjelle just fine!" Inigo yelled out, while Morgan turned back around and crouched down, almost as if she was trying to hide something from Lissa's view. "We got this, Lucy's the best at watching babies and you know it."

"I do know it, but I have to make sure none of you are dead or hurting. Have you seen O'wain, by the way?" At the mention of his cousin, Inigo shrank back, shaking his head furiously, but what he and Morgan were trying to cover up was revealed against their will, as the young boy proudly called to his mother that he was in there with them. She still couldn't see him, though, and her eyes narrowed as she realized the single possibility that meant: he was hiding behind the two kids, far too close to the baby for her liking.

"Oh no, we're all in trouble now," Morgan muttered, before jumping out of the way as Lissa came strolling towards them to grab her son, revealing that the boy was sitting right next to Lucina, his head gently stroking the head of the sleeping baby. At the sight, Lissa stopped walking, a hand coming up to cover her mouth in shock at what was happening; the three older kids knew that she wasn't happy about this, and that their time having everything going well for them had come to an end.

"I want you to get away from that baby, right now, O'wain." Her voice came out a lot calmer than anyone expected, but the pure disgust that Lissa was expressing was obvious to everyone but her son, who did pull his hand away from where it was resting on Kjelle's head but he didn't get up. "You heard me. Away from her, right now."

"He gets along with her great, Auntie Lissa, maybe you should let him spend time with her. They're just little kids, what's the worst that could happen?" Lucina wasn't bothered by what her cousin had been doing, and while she knew why her aunt was so against it she was going to try and keep the calm for as long as possible.

After inhaling and exhaling a few times rather rapidly in order to compose herself for giving her answer, Lissa stepped closer, although her son made no motions to show that he was taking her seriously. "I know they're just little kids, but do you know how weird it is to me that they're even able to be in the same room like this? I don't know how much his dad would like him being near that kid, and I definitely don't know how that kid's parents will like her having been near him! It's a mess I want no part of, and that means O'wain needs to move, now!"

Defiantly, as if he knew that disobeying his mother would only anger her further, O'wain shook his head. "No-nonono," he said, grinning at her. "Baby _good_." And with that, he reached to place his hand on Kjelle's head again, his grin not breaking even at the sound of his mother's loud, angered groan at what he was doing.

"O'wain, you are being such a naughty child right now, I told you to move and to get away from her, that does not mean ignore me!" It was a hopeless battle that Lissa was fighting and she was completely aware of that fact, but it didn't mean she wasn't going to keep trying to convince him to move without her having to move him herself. "If you come with your mommy, you'll get to maybe get cookies if we make any."

"You're making cookies?" Morgan asked, suddenly disinterested in the drama that was unfolding at the mention of a snack. "I bet it's Cynthia's fault, it sounds like something she would do. See you guys later, I'm seeing if that dear sister of mine's figured out where the cookie dough is." She gave a small wave before running out of the room, bellowing out her sister's name as she ran.

"You don't want to disappoint Morgan and the other kids, do you, O'wain? Do you want to be why they don't get to make cookies?" Lissa was almost ready to start begging for her son to listen to her when she saw him grow thoughtful, considering the words she was saying to him, but the thoughtfulness faded and he continued sitting in his exact same spot. Exasperated, she threw her hands up in the air and backed towards the doorway. "You know what? Fine, O'wain, you keep being a bad boy, you'll see how well that works out for you tomorrow when you don't get any presents."

Two gasps came from the older children in the room, both Inigo and Lucina looking at their aunt in shock at what she'd just said. "You can't tell him something like that, that's horrible to say! Auntie Lissa, just let him have fun until he gets tired of it, he's not hurting anyone by just touching her head!" Lucina was not going to let go of the idea that he could interact with this child and nothing was going to come out of it, that much was obvious, but Lissa wasn't convinced that this girl knew what she was actually talking about.

"I know you don't see what's wrong here, but trust me, there's a lot here that's very, very wrong, When I see Maribelle later when she comes to pick these kids up, she is _so_ getting an earful for doing this to me!" There wasn't any indication that she was going to change her mind on the threat she'd made to O'wain, but Lissa wasn't going to keep fighting when she'd keep being ignored while having to make the same points over and over again. "The moment he realizes he's being naughty, one of you bring him into the kitchen to me. I'm helping the good children do some baking."

"Aren't we good children too, though?" Inigo asked his sister once their aunt was out of the room. "I don't get it, why's she being so mean about Kjelle being here? She can't take things out on a baby, can she?"

"She can, and she is," Lucina replied, shaking her head as she looked down at Kjelle, the girl's eyes cracking open after that disturbance, her face beginning to contort as if she was about to start crying. "Uh, Inigo, I think we're gonna have to figure out how to feed her. Do you have any idea how to feed a baby?"

Hesitant on answering, Inigo ultimately gave a shrug. "Once we have something to feed her with, yeah I know how to feed a baby. We had to feed O'wain that one time when he was a baby, remember? I just…don't know how to go about getting her something to eat from." His sister wasn't going to be able to do much to help in solving the issue, her having to work to keep the baby from crying, so he started digging through the bag of things she'd been dropped off with, hoping there'd be something inside of it to help.

What he found was an empty bottle with a note on it that was written with some of the messiest handwriting he'd ever seen. Holding it up to try and read it, his eyebrows furrowed in frustration as the letters on the note didn't seem to make any words he recognized, and he realized that he'd have to ask someone else if they could decipher it. After passing it to Lucina to see what sense she could make of it and coming up with nothing there, they were both resigned to the fact that asking their aunt may have been the only choice they had. "I don't know if she's going to help," she told him, her voice genuinely concerned, "but do we really have anyone else we can go to? At least if she helps, she might make the milk or whatever for us too."

"It's better than nothing, if we can't read this note someone's got to be able to and it might only be Auntie Lissa here who can do it." Steeling himself for what he was about to do, Inigo gripped the bottle tightly in his hand before deciding he'd just take the whole bag with him, so that if his aunt did decide to help he wouldn't have to run back to grab anything else she needed. "I'll be back, Lucy. You watch her and keep her from crying too much, okay?"

"What does it look like I'm trying to do?" Lucina motioned her head towards the doorway. "Go, get her something to eat so me doing that's a whole bunch easier!"

He nodded, before hurrying out of the room with the bottle in one hand, the bag in the other, and an overwhelming fear that he was about to get to be witness to another round of Lissa getting upset about them interacting with the baby. Upon getting to the kitchen, he saw the disaster scene it'd become in the time that everyone had been in there, and his breath caught in his chest as he looked around, kids covered in flour and milk sitting up on the countertops laughing about what they'd done. His first thought was about how his mother would be disappointed when she came home to see the mess her kitchen had acquired, but that faded when he noticed he didn't see his aunt anywhere.

"If you're looking for your auntie, she's not in here," Cynthia said with a giggle, covering her mouth with a flour-coated hand. "She came in and her phone started ringing so she went to…I think probably the other room. That's when Morgan—" even with giggling she glared at her sister, who looked cleaner than the other three but still had some flour on her, "—decided she was going to start throwing things I'd gotten out to help at us. Look at us, we're super messy!"

"Yeah, I know, we've got to clean this up before my mom gets home or she's going to be upset that we got her kitchen dirty." Inigo paused, before remembering why he'd come into the kitchen in the first place. If his aunt wasn't there, he really should have gone to go find her instead, but a voice in the back of his head told him that asking the other kids what that note said might be better than asking his aunt about it.

As he went through with explaining what was going on to prompt him leaving the living room with his sister, cousin, and the other baby, Lissa was in fact in the other gathering area in the house, her phone pressed to her ear as she listened to Maribelle's worried questioning on the other end. "No, I haven't done a single thing with that baby all night," she said when she was given a chance to respond to the questions. "Your boys are being crybabies as usual, but we're gonna make cookies and that'll probably be the last thing we do until you come to get them."

"Lissa, you can't neglect that baby, I'll be over there soon enough to get her off your hands and I really do thank you for accepting her into your care for a few hours, but…" On her end of the call, Maribelle's voice trailed off as the door to the office she was in came flying open, but because she was in the dark she could only see the silhouettes of the visitors against the bright light in the hallway, no real details to be made sense of. "Hold on, someone's coming in here, give me a moment."'

The line went silent, but not dead, leaving Lissa in a state of wondering what was going on with her friend until she heard a scream that she knew wasn't coming from inside the house. It was distinctly Maribelle screaming, but what was going on? "Maribelle, are you okay?" she asked, panic rising within her. "Answer me, please! You can't scream like that and not tell me what's going on!"

"L-Lissa, it's horrible, it's so very horrible!" The beginning of Maribelle's reply came as she was uncovering the receiver of the phone, but the stammer was still audible regardless. "Th-they're saying it's snowing to the point that we can't leave. Can you be a doll and see if that's true? I cannot believe it if it is, but your brother and Robin have no reason to lie to me like that, they don't know what I…what I did tonight."

"They don't?" Initially, Lissa believed that it could have been a prank to get her heated, as Maribelle was easily the best person to drag her down into something like that, but at the admittance that no one knew what she'd done, it was clear it wasn't a prank at all. "Let me go see what it looks like outside, it wasn't snowing too hard when you and Frederick came to drop that baby off, was it?"

"Unfortunately, it was snowing rather nicely then, so there's a possibility we really are stranded here tonight." Her voice sounded defeated, as if she was giving up any fight she might have had with the situation, which only prompted Lissa to go look out the nearest window to see the weather. She was expecting a light dusting of snow, the hour not quite late enough for the teeth of the storm to have hit them, but when she found what looked to be multiple inches of snow on the ground and more on raised surfaces, she did exactly what her friend had done when she'd heard the news. She screamed, covering the phone to spare Maribelle's ears too much of the noise, and she went to look out a different window to see if the scene was the same there.

Predictably, it was, and she screamed again, before uncovering the receiver to say, "It's so bad out there, we didn't even get hit like this up in Ferox when I was living up there! How did it happen like this? How did…Maribelle! Maribelle, what am I going to do about all these kids? I have eight children I'm watching here alone, overnight, without anywhere for them to sleep or to wear or anything!"

"Calm down, Lissa, you don't need to be panicking where those children can hear you. I'm sure Lucina and Inigo can help you sort these issues out. For my boys, as long as they have a bed they'll be fine, and there's no shortage of beds in that house. I'm sure Robin or Sumia will call you to tell you what to do with their girls." Maribelle paused, and Lissa was sure that whatever it was she was going to say next, it wasn't something she was going to want to hear. "As for dear Kjelle, that's going to have to be entirely on you. As far as anyone here knows, she's safe at home with her parents; as far as her parents know, she's safe at my house with me. Just make sure she stays alive overnight, I'll be there as soon as I can to take her back off of your hands."

"I don't want her on my hands, I didn't know who she was when you dropped her off and if you'd told me that I'd have turned you down. How could you do this to me?" In Lissa's ear she could hear the notification that she was getting another call, and she could have easily hung up on her best friend to take care of that, but she chose to stick with Maribelle because she was finally getting to let loose what was bothering her. "I wouldn't make you watch the kid of someone you don't exactly get along with, why would you do it to me?"

"Because you're a caring woman who knows how to take care of a child just as well as I do, and I trusted you with my sons when they were that age so I figured I could trust you with their daughter. I didn't make a mistake on that, did I?" It wasn't meant to be the end of the conversation but before Lissa could say anything else the line went dead, the ringing of her phone getting that other call becoming almost deafening.

She had little time to get over her anger before answering the second call. "I'm going to assume someone's already told you the situation over here, but if they didn't I guess we're going to be a tiny bit late on getting the girls off your hands tonight." Sumia's laugh showed how awkward of a situation it was that she was in, but for Lissa that laugh felt more mocking than anything. She was being punished for something, she was sure of it, and now she was going to be stuck with eight children as a reminder that she'd done something, at some point, completely wrong. While she was dwelling on that, stewing in her own anger, Sumia had continued speaking, so when Lissa started listening again she was at the tail-end of the ramblings. "Please, whatever you let them do tonight, even if it's anything we don't want them doing, don't let them share the same room when it comes to sleeping. If they're anywhere but home they'll fight over who gets the 'better' spot in the room, and that's not anything you want to have to listen to, I promise."

"Make them sleep in separate rooms, got it," she muttered in response, sounding exactly as angry at everything as she currently felt. Even though she wasn't on the phone with Maribelle anymore, she was still clearly impacted by that call, and she was making it all-too-obvious that something was bothering her.

"Lissa, do you need to talk something out before I go back to being with people here? I'll listen to whatever it is you have to say." The offer Sumia made was genuine, Lissa was sure of it, but she wasn't sure whether or not she wanted to take her up on what she was offering.

She was still debating it when Sumia chose to bring the call to an end, reminding Lissa that she did need to get back to the others and if they weren't talking she wasn't going to drain her phone to wait for something to happen. "I understand, but if I do need to talk, you're so who I'm going to," she said, her voice less angry than it was before but the anger was still bundled up inside of her. The moment that call ended, she was tempted to call Maribelle back and scream at her about what she'd done, but the temptation faded when she remembered that she could have done better and told Sumia what Maribelle had done, adding someone else to the mess they were both caught up in.

That wasn't right, though, and she knew that she needed to be more mature than that. This wasn't anyone's issue but her own at the moment, and throwing someone else in just because she was being irrational and stupid about the dumb decision Maribelle had made wasn't mature at all. She had to just go about her night exactly as she was going to anyway, and not let the fact that an unexpected baby was there ruin things, even though she was now supposed to be actually caring for that baby overnight.

Maybe it would have been for the best for her to tell someone else that there was that baby there, but she wasn't going to make that move now; she'd had her chance when Sumia offered to hear her out and she hesitated too long on taking it. The next opportunity she got to casually drop that information, though, she was going to do it, she swore to herself that she was going to and that she was finally going to get back at Maribelle for something. They were best friends, sure, but even the closest of friends needed to learn to not use each other.

Until then, she needed to get back to where the children were and try to salvage the night before breaking the news to all of them that they were stuck there with her. Figuring that it'd be easiest to tell them over a plate of freshly-baked cookies, she headed back towards the kitchen, poking her head into the living room to see Lucina and the crying baby still in there, completely alone. She tried her best to keep herself from looking disgusted as she stared at her niece for a second, but the moment she felt her control slipping away she ducked out and went to the kitchen.

The sight she was met was honestly worse than the one she'd just stepped away from, and she was tempted to run back to the other room and pretend like what was happening in the kitchen wasn't happening at all. "Who got into the flour and did all this?" she asked, her eyes shifting between all the children in the room, noticing that only one of them was completely clean and one looked like they were the culprit. "Are they going to be cleaning it up for me before we get to bake anything?"

"I think Cyn should clean it up, she's the one who taunted me," Morgan snapped in response, throwing more flour at her sister and the two boys seated on the counter. "I was only fighting for myself after she was mean to me."

"No, miss Lissa, you can't listen to her! She did it because she's a big bully, and it was funny for a little bit until she kept doing it and now she hasn't stopped and now we're never gonna get to make cookies!" While she'd been laughing about the incident before, Cynthia was almost in tears now, fanning her face with her dirtied hands. "I just want to get to have some good cookies before we go home, please clean this up so we can do that, Morg! Please!"

"Ha, that's a good one, you really think I'm going to take the blame for what you've done?" Now Morgan sounded upset as well, although Lissa had spent enough time around the girl to know that she was normally the one to blame for mischievous wrongdoings involving both her and her sister. "I'm not going to, you take it for once. I want cookies just as much as you do, so…" Mockingly, she raised a hand to her cheek and gave a fake sniffle. "Please, Cyn, please say you started it and clean it up."

Without missing a beat, and because he had more important things to deal with, Inigo looked to his aunt and told her plainly, "Morgan did this before I came in, don't listen to her trying to get her sister in trouble." The gasp that came from the girl was in shock, because she didn't think she'd be sold out like she was, and she threw flour in his direction for it, only missing hitting him because he raised the bag he was holding up like a shield to deflect it. When he realized what he'd instinctively done, he went wide-eyed and looked at the now-powdered bag before back at his aunt. "See, look at that, she's doing it to me too. And I'm only in here because I'm trying to help Lucy out."

"He's trying to be a kiss-up," Morgan corrected, winding up to throw more flour at him, but the glare Lissa shot at her was enough to make her toss it towards her sister and the two young boys instead. "Okay, okay, I'll get to cleaning so my sissy and those boys can make their cookies. Sorry for trying to have fun."

As Morgan went to the sink to start getting sponges for scrubbing what mess she'd made, Lissa shook her head at what just happened, before remembering that Inigo seemed to have something relating back to her most favorite thing to ask her about. "You're trying to help Lucina out with what, hm?"

"We think that we need to feed Kjelle, but we don't know how. And, um," he raised the bottle and its attached note up so that his aunt could read it, "we don't know what this says and we don't want to mess anything up by not reading it."

It took a split second for Lissa to recognize the handwriting, and her immediate instinct upon seeing it was to push it away; her hand got as far as touching the bottle before she thought twice about what she was doing. "Let me get a closer look," she said to cover up what she'd been about to do, and he relinquished what he was holding so that she could indeed read the note a bit better. "Wow, this handwriting has _not_ gotten better over time, I can't believe he still thinks it's cool to write in ways people can't easily read."

"But can you read it?" Inigo was expecting a negative answer, so when his aunt nodded his face lit up and he almost dropped the bag he was still holding as he started rummaging through it. "Okay, cool! What do you need from in here? Is there anything it says that I should grab out of here, or do we have everything already?"

"It's just directions for how much and how often she needs to eat, which…" Closing her eyes, Lissa though about what time it had been when the call with Sumia had ended. "I'm sure Maribelle fed her before she brought her over, but we should've already fed her a little bit ago and should be getting close to feeding her again within the next hour or so." One eye came open and she used it to look towards Inigo to see him digging through the bag. "Please for the love of everything tell me there's something in there that's food for this kid to eat, I don't want to be responsible for her starving because her parents or because Maribelle forgot to pack it for her."

He pulled out a small can and Lissa sighed in relief, thankful to see what was now in his hand. "This isn't really that full," he admitted, shaking it a bit and feeling the sparse contents within in shift around. "Do you think that's going to be okay?"

"It'll have to do, I'm sure it'll all work out." With both her eyes back open, Lissa was looking for somewhere clean there in that kitchen to get things set up, but every flat surface seemed to be dirtied up with the results of the flour fight, or it was covered with the tools that had been pulled out for baking in the first place. "Here, this is what we're going to do, we're going to mix this real quick and then you and Lucina are going to feed that baby, and then I guess I'll be in charge of her for all the overnight feedings she'll need."

"Overnight?" Inigo repeated, handing the can to his aunt while she still looked around for somewhere to prepare the bottle. "But shouldn't she get picked up to go home at some point? Like with…I don't know, with Brady and Freddy? Or by her own parents? Why's she going to stay here with us overnight?"

Lissa froze in her search, not having realized what it was she'd said until she'd heard Inigo's rapid-fire follow-up questions. "Uh, well, you see, something's happened and we're all having one big sleepover here," she explained, not wanting to get into details and having rioting children who were still covered in flour to have to deal with. "Everyone will get to go home and have Christmas at their house in the morning, I promise, but tonight we're all going to be here and we're going to have a good time."

"As long as I don't have to share my room with anyone, that's fine." Inigo didn't want to press further, his only thoughts at the moment about how he needed to get back to Lucina with the prepared bottle, so he started moving things around so that his aunt had a spot to work. Once he'd gotten enough of an area cleaned, she came to it and got to preparing the bottle, the movements a lot of muscle memory as she'd done that many times before, and within minutes she had something that kind of resembled milk ready for him to take back.

Before he went, however, she made sure to check the temperature of what was in the bottle, just like she always had for every other child she'd watched before. "Your sister probably knows what she's doing now, but seriously don't let that kid choke and die on this, I can't let her death be on my hands," Lissa said as she finally relinquished the bottle back to Inigo's hands, him nodding in understanding. "We'll get this all taken care of, for as long as she's stuck here, and even if I don't like it I'll be the responsible one here and make sure we keep her alive."

"We wouldn't dream of hurting Kjelle, don't worry," he replied with a smile, making sure to take the bottle and the bag back to the living room with him when he went. In the wake of his departure, she turned to look at the four kids still under her watch, shaking her head at them and how they weren't nearly as responsible as the others were.

"Miss Lissa, I think we're all gonna need to take showers to get nice and clean before we can make cookies," Cynthia stated, her comment easily one of the most obvious things Lissa had heard in her life. "Do you think we can do that and still make cookies, since we're going to be here all night with you?"

As much as she'd loved to tell her no, in her heart Lissa knew it was right to let the kids get to do what they wanted given the bad circumstances that had befallen them. For the rest of the night, she was going to let them have as much fun as she could, to soften the blow of the fact that they weren't going to be waking up Christmas morning in their own beds with their parents around. "Of course, we can do both, we've got the time for it. Come on, let's head upstairs and get you all clean in the guest bathroom, then we'll decide who's sleeping where, and _then_ we'll do some cookie baking."

Herding the three dirty kids upstairs (and getting the word from Morgan that she would go up as well once she'd cleaned the kitchen properly) wasn't hard at all, but as they were all walking up the stairs without touching anything with their grimy hands, Lissa had to stop and check in on the living room one more time before she followed. Everything was calm and quiet in there, Lucina focused on getting that child fed while Inigo watched, and just as she was going to ask where O'wain had gotten off to, she saw her son curled up on one of the couch cushions, fast asleep with his hand held tightly to the side of his face.

It was in that moment that it truly hit her that every single one of the children she was watching was going to be missing someone come the following morning, but her son was always going to have been in that boat. Rather than dwell on it she backed out of the doorway and followed the others upstairs, but with every step the truth hit her harder and harder, until she was fighting back tears once she got to the top of the staircase. Every other child in that house had two parents that loved them and were most likely bothered that they wouldn't be with their kid or kids on Christmas morning.

But O'wain, he had two parents that loved him, sure, but only one of them wanted to be there for him whenever possible. If he knew that, which she hoped he didn't, she was scared that he'd wake up in the morning to six kids upset that their parents still weren't there and one baby who didn't know better, while he'd just be getting up exactly as he always was going to that day.

How did following her heart end up breaking it like this?

* * *

 **A/N: I wish I could say this is the end of that first day, but not quite. just a little bit longer until we're onto day two!**


	5. Unholy Night

Accepting the fact that they were stuck at the station overnight because of the fast-moving storm that had come in earlier than expected went over relatively well for everyone. Most people didn't have anywhere they needed to be but at home, and those with children currently in Lissa's care knew that she'd take care of them as long as they needed her to. The fact that they'd be missing a second Christmas morning in some of their lives did sting a bit, but it was better to miss one morning than it was to wind up dead because of trying to drive in horrible road conditions.

With knowing that they were all going to be staying there, it dampened the overall mood of the celebration but didn't bring it to a stop; why should they have ceased with the party just because something bad happened? Continuing on with the party just meant they weren't letting the negative get to them, and as long as they were alive and in good health, that was what mattered in the end. And, of all the places to be trapped by a snowstorm, the police station wasn't the worst of them, as they had dealt with that happening there before and everyone had survived it then.

In fact, they all had survived it so well that, once almost everyone had moved to the main gathering room of the station as midnight neared, Chrom looked around at all of them and told them, without a second's consideration on how he sounded, "I understand that tonight might be hard for some of us, but let's try to keep in in our pants and not do any bonding in any of the offices, shall we?"

"Funny how you bring that up and no one involved in that incident is here right now, aside from myself," Robin said under his breath, shaking his head at the memory of what he'd stumbled into on complete accident the last time being trapped by snow at the station had happened. He paused, realizing what he'd just said, and then glanced at Chrom, who was focused entirely on him. "Where are those two, by chance? Did Maribelle ever leave the office after we spoke with her? And Frederick, what happened to him?"

"Let it be, Robin, wherever they are they're fine and most definitely not making those mistakes again. Naga knows that they learned from that incident last time." Laughing, Chrom waited to see Robin's almost relieved smile before he moved on, going back to looking at everyone else in the room as he kept talking. "At any rate, all offices are fair game for sleeping in, especially ones with comfortable chairs in them. All I ask of you is to not do anything you wouldn't do at home tonight, and if you do decide you're going to do anything, at least have the decency to lock the door and put a sign out."

Raising his hand, Gaius got as far as Chrom giving him an acknowledging glance before his arm was yanked back down by the stern woman standing right next to him, her eyes focused on the couple standing across the room from her that she knew Gaius was seeing as well. "What gives, Miriel? Anyone tell you to keep your hands to yourself?"

"I wanted to prevent you from embarrassing yourself and wasting everyone's time with whatever question you were going to ask," she replied, sounding smug on top of her normal sternness. "If it's about smoking, you should already know policy on that, and I'm inclined to believe that Chrom's new rule about private relations does require consent from all involved parties, meaning if you're suspecting something—"

"I'm not sure what you think it is I was going to ask, but it didn't involve anything requiring consent or whatever." As she was still holding onto his arm to keep him from raising it once more, he had to yank it away from her grasp, only to hear her softly tut at him in disappointment. Bothered by the jumps in logic she'd made there, he excused himself from the group, heading towards the front door while rummaging through his pocket to pull out his old, trust vapor pen that he'd always kept on him during these events.

His plan had been to step outside, take a few drags of his smoke, and then come back in refreshed and ready to get back to socializing, but upon opening the door he found himself unable to get out. Just the process of opening the door had sent a pile of snow cascading into the station, hitting his shoes and starting to freeze his feet, and he was left standing there wondering what he was supposed to do now that he'd unleashed part of winter's fury into the station. As he turned to call for someone to come look at what was happening outside, he saw that he was being joined by quite a few of the people who'd been gathered around that he'd left behind, all of them approaching in awe and worry.

"Oh my gods no one said it was going to snow that much!" Nowi excitedly screamed, running ahead of everyone else, pushing past Gaius, and jumping out into the snowbank that had appeared where the normal smoking area was. The snow easily went up past her knees when she was standing fully, but as the smallest person there it wasn't that much of an accomplishment. She seemed to be thrilled to be out in the snow, until a gust of wind blew through the area, first chilling her to the bone then hitting Gaius and everyone else right there at the door. "Br-r-r! It's cold out here too! No wonder we're all stuck here overnight! Everyone else had the right idea to just stay home, didn't they?"

She brought herself back into the building, making sure to physically push Gaius out of the way again as she came in, her already-cold touch seeping down past the layered clothing he'd chosen to wear that night. "I don't know what you're talking about, this isn't much of anything," he said, bringing his vapor pen to his lips even though he was still inside. "Might give me a bit of frostbite to walk home in this, but I can do it in an hour, tops."

"Don't even think about smoking that in here," Robin sternly told him, seeing the proximity of the man to the door but recognizing that he was still on the wrong side of it. "If you're not worried about getting frostbite walking home in the snow, you can definitely stand outside for the two minutes it takes for you to get the satisfaction you're looking for with that."

"Y-yeah, it's not that cold out there, smoke somewhere else!" To prove her point, Nowi made another lunge towards the still-opened door, but Ricken grabbed her arms and tried his best to hold her down in place; what resulted was her falling forward and him landing on top of her, her head falling right into the pile of snow that had collected on the station floor. They both laughed as they picked themselves up, their faces alight with color (for several reasons, first and foremost being the bitter cold), and once they were to their feet she was back to antagonizing Gaius by pulling out her own smoking tool of choice. "Come on, if you go out I'll go out with you, we can follow rules sometimes."

"Sucks that my normal smoking pal isn't here for the experience, but what the hell, you're not half bad company, Nowi. Let's go for it." Stepping through the pile of snow he'd caused, Gaius went outside, Nowi right behind him, which left everyone else who'd come over to figure out how to close the door so that it wouldn't get much colder inside.

It required a few shoes being soaked with snow, but the door was able to be shut to keep the cold and the smell of fruity smoke outside with the two smokers. "I'm impressed that you're allowing them to be out there alone, Ricken. Would have figured you'd want to keep an eye on Nowi at all times." Robin spoke with a smile as he looked at the smaller man standing beside him, who was shaking out one of his shoes. "You must really trust her if you're allowing her out there without you."

"I don't think I get what you mean," Ricken admitted in response, bending down to take off his other shoe as he considered them both a soaking wet lost cause. "She's just a friend, a really good friend, but she deserves to get to be with other friends too. I'm not going to hog all her time just because she's my only real work friend that's here."

"That isn't the way I thought you were going to answer that." Scratching at the back of his head, Robin laughed and directed Ricken to walk with him, back towards where the rest of the people there were. "I suppose I spend too much time around Cordelia, I was expecting a blush-filled and awkward answer of you deflecting what I said because you could 'never' love her or something."

"Love her? You do realize Nowi's got a lot of years on me, right?" When Robin nodded at that, Ricken sighed, moving both of his wet shoes to one hand as he carried them with him. "I know that you probably don't have a whole lot to do when we're stuck in here like this, but guessing that me and Nowi are a thing? No way! All we do is play games and sometimes she talks about how she's old enough to be my mom, easily, and that weirds me out too much for me to ever be interested in her."

"At least you're honest about things." Casting a glance towards Cordelia, who'd taken to sitting in a chair as she wistfully watched Stahl talking with Chrom about something, their conversation located right by the food table, Robin shook his head. "I think some people here could learn a thing or two from talking with you. You're wise beyond your years."

Something about how Robin said that made Ricken cringe, looking at his wet shoes in one hand, to his colorful, definitely not professional socks he was wearing on full display now that his shoes weren't on. "Heh, I guess maybe I am, but don't forget that I am still kind of young. Sort of. Not, like, a child young but I'm not super old either! I'm the right age to be an up-and-coming officer who's going to become a household name someday!"

"I don't…think that's really how it works in this place, but if it keeps you going." Wondering where it was that Ricken could have gotten such high hopes for himself, Robin was going to follow his statement up with something before he thought harder about what had been said. About how Ricken was looking to be respected by the people around him, and how he thought being a good officer would do that for him. It would, theoretically, make him a popular name in the station, but in the outside world? He'd forever be just an officer, unless he somehow managed to surpass Chrom as the police chief, and even then, people might recognize him as a chief but not know his name.

The only places Robin knew of where members of the police were known as more than just officers were in Ferox, where the heads of the different forces were celebrities of sorts, or in Plegia, where it was his own father who was the police chief and more or less the leader of the country. Just thinking about his father made him shudder, and he knew he needed to get his mind off that topic before he managed to force himself into a bad mood over it. He'd been hoping that someone would start trying to strike up a conversation with him or Ricken and that, by doing that, he'd be able to move on, but what happened instead was probably more effective at the job.

The creaking noise that came with the door opening came in perfect sync with the power in the entire station flickering for a moment, before several of the lights went brighter than normal, only for everything to go completely silent, darkness overtaking the station. It was a moment of everyone being stunned by the change in atmosphere, followed by a loud and distinct "what's going on in here?" coming from the sole office occupied by someone working that night. Phones were being pulled out to use as light sources, and the few stragglers who hadn't been in the main area made their way there to rejoin everyone, but the two people who had opened the front door to let themselves back in remained right outside, looking in on the complete darkness.

"Should we tell them why the power's out?" Nowi asked, turning her back on the opened door to look out into the snowy parking lot. "I mean, I don't know if they heard it in there or not, and if they didn't they might be pretty confused."

"You can go ahead and tell them, I'll go check and make sure everything's okay. You know, minus the part where someone just ran into a power transformer in the snow." Gaius waved for Nowi to enter and she nodded, taking her task seriously as she went back inside. That left him out there to take another puff at his fake cigarette, the smoke billowing out of his mouth afterwards a thick cloud that smelled strongly of all his favorite candies and sweets. "What was that, did I say I'd go check? Huh, I must think I'm on the clock or something, this man's got nowhere to be but right here."

He closed his eyes as he tried smugly relaxing up against one the still-closed other half of the door, but the blinding flash that had accompanied the accident coursed through his mind, sending him standing straight once more. Looking down at the snow-covered ground, dreading actually going out into it, he let out a heavy sigh, producing almost as much of a cloud as he had with his vapor pen. "I can't just stand by and let someone possibly be dying out there. Someone better thank me for what I'm about to do one of these days, because none of them are here to do it."

Tucking his pen into his pocket, he trudged out into the snow, the drift coming up higher on his legs than he expected it to, and after he was away from the protection of the station's walls he could feel the full force of the wind and still-falling snow. But he couldn't turn back, he'd made it a point to go through with checking on the person who'd wrecked into the transformer across the road from the station, and he wasn't going to leave them to die unless he got struck down by something unrelated on his journey. As he got closer, and the wind died down for a moment, he was able to see the driver of the car that had wrecked moving around inside, their airbags not having gone off in the front because of how they'd hit the metal box.

He waved to see if he could get the driver's attention, teeth chattering and body shaking as he did, and he got a wave in return. That was followed by the driver getting out of the car, causing Gaius to stop in his tracks and draw in a deep breath. "Oh! It's you!" the driver called out, still waving even as he was now crossing the road to meet Gaius on the side with the station. "Should have known it would be you out in this slush!"

"Y-y-you weren't already inside?" Gaius asked, trying to limit the amount of times his teeth were knocking together while he was speaking. "I could've s-sworn I saw you around…but whatever, you're h-here now, aren't you!"

The man finished crossing the street and nodded happily when he got to Gaius' side, wrapping the freezing man up in a big hug before letting go of him and looking back at the car wreck he'd caused. "Yes, sure am! Overslept, had to waste no time to get to where the party is! All of our friends are inside, correct?"

Gaius was too stunned at what had been said to properly answer, so his over-eager nodding had to do the trick. What kind of crazy person willingly drove out in the snow in order to get to a work party, knowing that traveling out could cause serious harm? Together they walked back to the station's front door, that he'd forgotten to close when he'd walked away; that ended up being okay because Nowi was standing there, light from inside the station shining brightly behind her. "Hey, you found Gregor! Good job, Gaius!" Nowi nearly tackled the newcomer down into the snow, the older man giving a hearty laugh and showing no sign of the cold bothering him. "I was so worried you wouldn't make it, you make all parties so much more fun when you're at them! Come on, come on, let's get you inside and talking to everyone now that you're here!"

She was quick to rush him inside, leaving Gaius still out in the snow, looking dumbstruck at everything he'd just witnessed. "Excuse me, but how's there power back?" he loudly asked as he stomped inside, slamming the door behind him before trying to break all of the snow off of his pant legs. "How'd you manage to get that working again when Gregor's car is still wrecked into the transformer? How, huh?" He was greeted with confused looks and no answers, so he repeated himself: "How did you manage to fix things when nothing out there's been done?"

"We have a backup here, all major buildings in Ylisstol have some sort of generator to rely on if accidents happen. Which, uh, did you go check an accident scene on your own?" Chrom's eyes tracked down to Gaius' wet pants, which were a dead giveaway to the answer. "You should have come in to get one of us, what if the person out there had been a criminal fleeing a crime scene? Or, worse, what if they were being tailed by criminals, and you as a police officer became their next victim?"

"It's almost as bright as it is during the day out there, I could see it was old man Gregor from a mile away. Must've gone senile and forgotten how to drive in the snow." His hand itching to grab something and stick it in his mouth, Gaius got as far as grabbing his vape pen once more before remembering that he'd been outside smoking when all this happened, he couldn't go back out right then. Groaning, he smacked himself on the forehead and said, "Damn it, anyone here got some candy or anything I can snack on? All this stress of this place is driving me crazy!"

"There's always the table covered in treats." The response made Gaius' ears perk up, as it was Cordelia who said it, but when he saw her looking completely neutral towards him, his spirits came crashing down. "What, did you think I was going to offer you something special? Those days are over, Gaius, just accept it."

He hadn't even noticed that she was sitting rather close to Stahl as she spoke, even though he didn't seem to be noticing it either, but when she pat her hand down on his leg it was enough to get them both to realize which man she'd picked in the end. "You know what, treat table it is, thanks for nothing with all that, sugar." He blew a kiss in Cordelia's direction, her rolling her eyes as he did, and soon he was off raiding the treats once more, so that he could carry them back to his office with him and hole himself up in there, unwilling to interact with anyone else now that things had completely fallen apart for him.

In the wake of his outburst and subsequent disappearance, the atmosphere in the station was able to return to the casual conversation and interaction it had been before, although the reality that they were stuck there overnight loomed over everyone's heads like a dark cloud. When midnight struck, the idea emerged that everyone headed off to whenever they were going to sleep to try and get on that, and by the time it was half past midnight the station had gone mostly dark once more, couples in offices with lights on as they kept talking but everyone else attempting to sleep.

The lone exception to that was Lon'qu, sitting at his desk reading through weather reports and fielding whatever calls were coming into the station. This was his shift, this was his time to focus on what he was doing, and nothing was going to disrupt him from it. Those people who'd come in earlier in the night? Paid them no mind. The power going out? A temporary hiccup but nothing he couldn't work around. His personal phone lighting up with a good-night-be-safe message from his wife? He'd ignore it as long as he could.

She'd have to understand that he was busy being an officer, she could handle not getting a response to what he'd sent, just like every night.

* * *

Rough nights were easy to come by when there was an infant in the house, always waking up at odd hours to cry and whine about whatever was bothering her in that moment. But when the crying that kept happening overnight was from a baby that wasn't the one he was used to, it was a lot harder to accept that it was happening over and over again. Each time that baby started crying in whatever room it was she was in, it would wake Vaike up in that little bedroom, his first instinct always to make sure that nothing was wrong. It was, predictably, impossible to check on a baby that wasn't anywhere close to where he was, though, and that made the constant being woken up incredibly difficult to deal with.

It also didn't help that he was having a difficult time getting his mind to wind down and move past the idea of babies, and every time that child started screaming he'd be right back to thinking about how that _should_ have been his child screaming, he should have been needing to play the role of good father and helpful husband and getting up to fix whatever problems there were to be fixed. Eventually, he had to say that enough was enough and that sleep wasn't going to happen under those conditions, and so he got out of the bed with the intention of heading out to the living room to sit in the stillness of the night.

What stopped him from doing so was the sound of breathing coming from the other bed there in the room, how it was so normal and didn't seem to be bothered by the constant screaming he was being annoyed by. Rather than be respectful and let his wife sleep while she could, he chose to sit on the side of her bed, putting his hand on the side of her face and letting it track down her cheek until it was resting on her neck, then her collarbone, before starting to pull away some of the blanket that was bunched up around her. Thanks to the light still coming in the window, he was able to see her lightly flinch when he touched her, but ultimately not get too bothered by what he was doing.

"Ain't it funny, that we're stuck somewhere together once again, without it bein' our choice for it t'happen?" he whispered, his question not meant to be answered by anything but dark silence. "Except it really isn't funny, we need t'be anywhere but here."

He looked up at the window, seeing the snow still pelting the glass, and he sighed, running his hand down Sully's face again. "You're probably lovin' the fact that you can sleep all ya want tonight without havin' t'worry 'bout gettin' up, but I'm sure you're also worryin' that everything's fine back home. Or maybe it's just me doin' the worryin', I don't know." He gave a short laugh. "It's probably just me, that's an ol' Vaike thing t'do."

As he was talking, he was slowly looking back towards her, looking at the way she hadn't moved at all since he'd come over to her, seeing how peaceful she seemed even in the horrible situation they'd found themselves in. Then it hit him, that this wasn't peaceful at all, that this was her showing that she'd fallen asleep while upset, something he'd never had to see her do before. Normally she'd be angry going to bed, or in a good mood, and when she was he could sit with her and watch her sleep and see her be expressive even in her sleep—this wasn't anything like that. This was her being vulnerable, this was her showing weakness she liked to mask and hide from everyone.

"Damn it, Sully, I hate seein' ya like this, even if ya don't know I'm seein' it." Pulling his hand off of her and using it to grab the side of his face, Vaike took a few slow breaths, trying to sync his breathing with hers for a moment. He knew he should have been trying to sleep still, but he also knew that trying would be nothing short of pointless when that baby in the other room started screaming again. "We just wanted this first holiday t'go right, we gave up goin' out with friends t'make sure it'd happen and yet we still ended up here, almost as far away from our baby as we would've been if we, I'unno, went up t'the camp again or somethin' like that."

The lack of reactions he was getting were perfect for what he was saying, because he knew if she heard what he was saying, she'd have some kind of jokingly rude comment about how he was acting like this was the end of the world or something. But he could see it in her sleeping form, she was just as bothered by things as he was, and that meant that whatever she'd say to him about it would be her, once again, hiding her suffering with her harsh tongue. That was something he'd fallen in love with about her, but when it came to real suffering he knew it would just be better for her to admit something was wrong than for her to keep hiding it.

Her hiding her weakness had been a real issue they'd had to face over the past year, and he knew that this separation from their child was the biggest obstacle they'd had to face together. Of course, saying that was discounting some of the other obstacles they'd had to hurdle themselves over, the biggest one prior to this being the rather difficult circumstances surrounding Kjelle's birth, but they'd manage to get past all of that without too many issues. This, though, this was something that he was sure would linger in their minds until at least the following year when they could try fixing their mistake by having an actual proper holiday with her.

"D'ya think she's woken Maribelle up a buncha times tonight?" he asked out loud, the thought of the woman who'd been responsible for some tough times having to suffer because of them making him smile. "I sure hope she has, Maribelle deserves it for some 'a the things she's done t'us. Still not sure why ya insisted on trustin' her, of all people, with Kjelle for this, when there's perfectly good other people we coulda called on. Like…" He paused to think through all the other options they had, finding fault with each and every one of them. "…Y'know what, never mind on that, Maribelle might be a bitch but she's a decent baby-watcher when ya give 'er the chance."

The laugh that filled the room after that wasn't his own, but rather one from Sully, as she'd been woken up by his talking slowly but surely. "I might have made a mistake in trusting her on this, but she knows what she's doing. Now, you going to explain why the hell you're sharing this bed with me right now, or are you going to just sit there?"

"I love when ya talk t'me like that, just sayin'," he told her with a smirk, before breaking into an explanation as to why he was out of his bed and sitting with her in hers. As he spoke, she slowly brought herself up to sitting, blankets still bundled around her because he was sitting on them and made it impossible for her to easily get rid of them. With the end of his explanation came him opening his arms up for a hug, and she looked at him with a raised eyebrow and a shake of her head. "Wh-what? What's with ya not wantin' t'hug me?"

"I'm still waking up, dumbass. You're throwing everything at me at once and I…" Her eyes were shifting from looking at one arm to the other, avoiding looking at his face in the middle as his entire demeanor shifted from positive to negative. "I'm not in the mood for cuddling right now, sorry."

"That's okay, 'cause these ain't cuddles, it's just a hug!" He wiggled his arms and tried smiling at her again, but the rejection was making it harder than usual. "C'mon Sully, you and I both know ya need it right now. It's been a hard night."

She considered that maybe, just maybe, he was right, before deciding that she wasn't going to accept the offer no matter what. "It's been more than hard, but don't you think that me curling up in your arms like a weakling would remind me of what we're missing? We should be at home right now, one of us holding the other while we're also holding Kjelle, we shouldn't be in this farmhouse with no power and no way to get home."

"You're really caught up on missin' her, aren't ya?" It was a pointless question, he knew that was probably the only thing she was thinking about. "Listen, I hear ya on wantin' to be spendin' this time with her, I wanted it too, but we haveta take what we've got and we haveta not think too much about what we're missin'."

"Huh, I'm pretty sure some past version of you could have really used that advice, but what do I know? I'm only the one who had to deal with your mopey ass that whole week we were stuck there, you can give me one damn day to be distraught that I don't—"

"Are ya really gonna talk t'me like that?" He hadn't meant to cut her off, but after looking at her with wide eyes as he realized what he'd done, Vaike noticed that Sully seemed to have shut her own mouth then anyway. "No, wait, I think ya caught at the same time I did that what ya were sayin' wasn't exactly right."

"—no, what I realized is that every issue I have goes back to the same source, but we can run with your idea, it's easier to explain I'm sure." It wasn't always that Sully was pushed to the point of emotional reactions, but she was clearly running entirely on how she felt, not what she thought, and she wasn't making any effort to mask anything. "I can't _believe_ it, I can't believe I never noticed that that's the common thing throughout all of this."

"That what's the common thing?"

She pursed her lips together and shook her head, seeing her husband's confusion as she refused to respond. It took a bit more needling from him to get her to talk, and when she did she was carefully picking her words. "I don't want to point fingers here, but it just hit me that the whole reason we've ever gotten into any messes together before this is because of your ex-girlfriend, and the reason this situation here is a mess is, well, also because of her. And I can't believe I didn't catch that until just now, damn it!"

"Whoa, hold on there a sec, why's this got anythin' t'do with Lissa?" Saying that name felt weird on his lips, but Vaike didn't do well being vague about things. "We're back on good terms with her, right? Why are ya blamin' her for us bringin' Panne home and gettin' stuck out here for it?"

"I'm not blaming her for that part, I'm blaming her for…for…" The words failed to come out of her mouth, her mind working too hard to stop her from saying it, but the pleading look she gave Vaike was done in an attempt to get him to catch what she was trying to say.

It wouldn't work because she was talking to one of the densest people she knew. "For what? It ain't like she's done anythin' wrong in this, I haven't talked t'her or heard about what she's doin' in months, and even then the last time I heard 'bout her it was Lon'qu rudely tellin' me somethin' because he thought it'd bother me t'hear it. It didn't, by the way, hearin' bout her doesn't bother me that much anymore and I was kinda thinkin' that maybe someday we'd be able t'put everythin' behind us."

"Okay, and what do you think you're going to do to be able to do that?" Stifling a yawn mid-speech, Sully looked straight at Vaike and waited for his answer. When he shrugged, she flatly said, "I highly doubt you just came up with that thought off the top of your head right now, what the hell are you thinking you're going to do?"

"Oh, y'know, nothin' too big. Just maybe when Kjelle's older, maybe her and their kid could get t'see each other and be friends or somethin' like that." He was suggesting it genuinely, a thought that he'd had many times over the past half-year, but when she continued looking at him, no change in expression, he knew he'd hit something she wasn't okay with. "What's the problem with that? Minus the part where she's a huge part 'a my past and is part 'a the reason why we're together, that could always make things a bit awkward."

"Remember what I said about how all our issues go back to the same source, which is obviously her because neither of us are stupid enough to ignore that? You're basically saying that our daughter should be friends with her son, which will only end up causing issues for her in the end. Can you imagine that, hm? Can you imagine him growing up to be just like his mother and causing nothing but problems for Kjelle?" The gears were turning inside Sully's mind, Vaike knew it, but he couldn't really tell what she was trying to get at because he wasn't making the connection that a child was just like their parent; he knew better than to make that judgment, knowing that he was different from his parents and his daughter would be different still from him.

But, even if he wasn't seeing what she was getting at the way she saw it, the fact remained that she was seeing some issue that he needed to make note of as to not offend her, or at least to know to bring up at a later, less-emotional time in their lives. "I guess I can imagine it, kinda. She's just a baby, and I'm not talkin' about forcin' them to be friends when they're not little kids anymore, I'm just saying once she's able to walk or somethin' maybe then they could hang out and get some time together."

"What would be the point of it, though? Letting her have our daughter in her care without us around? Us having to watch her son without her? It's just work we don't need to do, or don't need to make her do, and I want no part of it." There was something that followed, but it was mumbled and Vaike was sure he wasn't supposed to hear it, as when Sully said it she had let her eyes track downward until she was looking straight down, no longer focused on him and what he was doing.

That allowed for him to stand up and walk back over to his bed, picking up the blanket he'd been sleeping with so that he could wrap himself in it as he joined her once more, the cold in the room having gotten to him. "Yeah, you're right 'bout all that. It's a dumb idea, even if it'd do wonders on buryin' the hatchet between us all."

"You have to ask yourself, does that hatchet really need to be buried?" It wasn't asked loudly, but it was just loud enough that he heard her say it, and the question lodged itself within his mind for thinking about as the day went on. "Hey, let's just move past this, see if we can get back to sleep or something. I doubt it's anywhere close to daytime yet and we don't need to be wasting our time being awake when it's still snowing out."

He nodded, pulling his blanket around him tighter as he flopped down onto the bed next to her. "'Cept we're both tryin' to sleep in this bed together, okay? Not a fan of sleepin' alone anymore, just can't get comfortable doin' it and I think I'd rather be sleepin' than gettin' woken up every time that baby in this house screams. And here I was, thinkin' that Kjelle does a lot 'a screamin' in the middle 'a the night, but nope seems like that's just a normal baby kind 'a thing."

"I haven't heard their kid scream once, what are you talking about?" Maybe it was attributed to how deeply she was sleeping, or maybe it had been in Vaike's head all along, but once they did get to sleeping together in that bed, sharing their blankets and wrapped up tightly to both fit in the limited space, there wasn't a single instance of a child screaming for the rest of the night.

* * *

At the house in Ylisstol, however, the scene overnight was much different than the one out on the farm, as there _was_ a lot of screaming, coming from two small children who were crying out for different things. O'wain kept crying because he wasn't in his house, in his bed, and he was stuck sleeping with his mom, which was not normally a huge problem for him. What made it a problem, though, was her having to sleep in the center of the bed with him on one side, because on the other side she had a blanket barrier separating her from where she'd laid Kjelle out for the night. And any time O'wain started kicking up a fuss, it got her started as well, and she was much harder to quiet down than he was every single time.

The worst times of all were when she'd start crying on her own and wake him up, which was a nightmare scenario because if she started the crying herself it meant something was wrong and needed to be fixed. Time and time again Lissa had to tell herself that she was handling this because of Maribelle and she was doing it because Maribelle was her best friend and had needed the help, but she really did not enjoy having to tend to an infant when she hadn't wanted anything more than the one son she had.

Morning came and Lissa felt almost as tired as she had been when she'd gone to bed in the first place, probably because she'd spent almost the whole time taking care of at least one screaming child. "When I see one of your parents I am going to chew them out for this," she grumbled as she watched Kjelle once again sleeping, laying completely flat on her stomach as her back gently raised and fell with every breath. "Unless they don't know you're here still, in which case I'm going to chew both of them out for it. You are too much, too needy, too whiny, and too annoying!"

"Miss Lissa? Why are you saying mean things like that?" She hadn't noticed that the door had opened, and she definitely hadn't heard Morgan and Cynthia come into the room, the nicer of the twins being the one to address her. "Kjelle did nothing wrong except be a baby, you can't be mean to her because she did baby things."

"What she did wrong isn't something you girls would understand, sorry that you had to hear anything but you just don't get it." Lissa shook her head, turning away from Kjelle to look at the twins, both of whom were looking back at her with confused eyes. "It's just a bad situation that you two better not ever get into anything similar to, ever. Trust me."

The twins shared a look between them, Cynthia shrugging while Morgan was the one to speak. "So you mean like don't ever get involved with boys? Sounds like it's possible, boys aren't fun for anything most of the time."

"I don't think that's what she wanted you to get out of this," Cynthia quickly replied, grabbing her sister's shoulders and shaking her a bit. "I think she's trying to tell us don't get involved with babies! Her problem's with Kjelle, remember? She's not a boy, so why would boys be the problem?"

"Actually, Morgan's more right than you'd think." This was getting into territory that Lissa really did not want to break into with these two girls, so she motioned for them to leave the room, something they both ignored. "It's a problem with boys, but we're not going to talk about it beyond this because it's adult and not for little ears."

Again the twins looked at each other, before both of them turned to face her with knowing smiles on their faces, something she found rather unsettling. At the same time, as if they'd rehearsed doing it, they opened their mouths and said, "Oh, so it's gotta be about her dad."

The echoing of them copying each other was just as unsettling as what it was they said, and when Lissa visibly tensed up at hearing it, they both started giggling. "No, that's it, both of you out of here! I'm not dealing with this right now!" She raised her voice louder than she needed to, and while it got the job done of scaring them out of the room, laughing the whole way, she was left with two small children whimpering and about to start crying. "Ugh, really? I'm going to teach you girls a lesson when I get the chance!"

O'wain was sitting up in the bed, rubbing at his tired eyes and beginning to choke out sobs at how he didn't like having been woken up with the yelling, and as much as she wanted to be able to comfort her son Lissa knew that she needed to stop the shrill crying of the much smaller child first. "I cannot believe they did that, or that they figured that out, or any of this! Those girls were little when things ended between me and him, there's no way that…" She shook her head, getting to work to tending to Kjelle to keep her from crying too much. "They can't actually know what happened, they must've just been guessing."

But as the girls ran down the stairs, stomping down each one the whole way, they proved that they knew a lot more about things than they'd let on. "I can't believe miss Lissa thinks we don't know why she doesn't like Kjelle, I mean, Lucina and Inigo told us everything they know and we're not exactly dumb," Morgan said, finding amusement in how hard she could make each stair thud underneath her feet. "I'm so gonna tell our parents she thinks mean things like that, then maybe she won't get to watch the cute baby and they will and we'll get to play with her!"

"Morg, that doesn't make a lot of sense," Cynthia chided, also stomping as much as her sister but being more careful as she didn't want to accidentally slip and fall down the stairs. "It makes some sense, but I don't think miss Lissa wants to have to watch Kjelle ever again. So that means our parents probably can sometime anyway!"

"She's just playing difficult, everyone wants to watch cute babies when they get the chance." For the last couple of stairs, Morgan jumped over them completely, landing hard on the ground floor but not falling when she did. "I'd watch her right now if I was allowed to."

"We're not allowed to watch her, though, so…" Almost stumbling down the stairs as she tried copying her sister, Cynthia collected herself and salvaged her landing to look half as graceful as her sister had, before bowing and giggling. "Ooh, wait! Morg, you know what us being down here means?"

"Uh, I'm not sure, Cyn, what's up?" Tilting her head at her sister, she saw how Cynthia's face had lit up with some thought, and it took her a second before the same thought crossed her own mind. "Right! It's Christmas! It's…Christmas and we're not at home and we're not with our parents. And we're gonna be happy about this?"

Slowly nodding, Cynthia explained, "I don't know if 'happy' is how I'd word it, but we're gonna make happiness for ourselves! We can't play with the baby, boo, but we can do something else that we both like." She grabbed Morgan's hand and started tugging her towards the living room. "We're gonna see what Inigo got for Christmas from his parents and beg him to let us play with it!"

The sisters shared a laugh as they made their way to the living room, ready to act on Cynthia's plan, but they were foiled when Lucina and Inigo were both sitting in there, watching the doorway for whoever was going to come in next. "What's got you two up so early?" Lucina asked, smiling at the girls as they came in. "No one upstairs was crying when I woke up, so it couldn't be something to do with that."

"They came to open our presents." Inigo spoke without knowing that was sort of what the girls' plan had been, but his dejected tone told them that they weren't going to get away with it. "Which I guess I'd let them help me with, if there were even presents to open! Mother and Father didn't come home, so the presents are still locked up in their bedroom until they come back! What's a Christmas without gifts?"

"It's still Christmas, stop that." Nudging her brother to try and get him to cheer up, Lucina received a glare in return, followed by him sticking his tongue out at her. "Mother and Father will be home soon enough, and all of our friends will get to leave, and only then will we get around to doing Christmas as a family. We wouldn't want to open presents if no one else is getting any, would we?"

He knew she was the voice of reason in the moment, but Inigo was a child before a rational thinker, and he wasn't going to take the letdown of the day in stride. "Well, no, we wouldn't, but Lucy! Think about it! We're having to wait instead of doing like we do every year, and our parents made sure to keep the presents somewhere we would never find them!"

"Sounds like a personal problem to us," Morgan quipped, looking to Cynthia to know that she was saying the thing they were both thinking. "Our parents can trust us with keeping our presents out all day and all night, because we're good kids and we'd never try opening them early. You, I guess, can't be trusted the same way."

"We're opening presents?" Coming into the room without any kind of clue as to what was being discussed, Brady froze in the doorway, cupping his hands to his cheeks before letting out an excited yell for his brother to catch up with him so he wouldn't miss anything. While the four older children broke from their conversation to try and explain that they were, in fact, not opening presents at all, he and Freddy both insisted on hearing things their way to a point, accepting that they weren't opening presents right then but still insisting that they were going to be doing that soon.

It was taking an awful lot of strength within the older children to not lose their patience with the two youngest kids there, but somehow they managed to get through it, even if they weren't able to give the boys the answer they wanted. "Once your parents come to pick you up, then you'll get to open presents. How can you open anything when you're not at your house?" Lucina asked, sounding as gentle as she could. "We don't have anything here for you to open, even once we do have our gifts."

"But you have to," Brady protested, Freddy nodding along with him. "You have to, Ma says that we get gifts from everyone!"

"I don't think anyone thought you'd be here today. That's why we don't have anything." Thinking on her feet, Lucina looked at the other kids, hoping they'd have something to say to back her up, but when they all met her with blank stares she sighed. "Remember, your father brought you here, then they brought Kjelle here, and we know they didn't want to leave her here forever."

Blinking his gray eyes a few times in surprise, Brady tilted his head and confusion took over his face. "Ma didn't bring her, that's not okay!" His bottom lip jutted out. "Ma came here with her and didn't say hi?"

Eyes going wide, Lucina shook her head rapidly, not having realized that what she'd said would have ended badly. The damage was already done though, and soon the two little boys were crying about how that meant that their mother, and by extension their father, clearly didn't love them. As everyone tried calming them down, the sound of footsteps down the stairs were heard, and fairly soon after Lissa was poking her head into the room, O'wain clinging to her leg and Kjelle in her arms. "Oh, this is where you all are. Neato. Don't cause too much trouble, will you?" She was coming into the room, preparing to drop the baby off in the first set of arms opened to hold her.

Because she wasn't focused on hushing screaming boys, it was Morgan who jumped to be the one to hold Kjelle, giggling the whole time. "I'm gonna watch her so good, just you wait and see how great this goes," she said amidst her giggling, which Lissa seemed to acknowledge but ultimately ignore.

"Okay, well, as long as you're all in here, nothing bad's going to happen, so…" She backed away from the group of kids, O'wain still clinging to her with every step. "I'm going to go make something for all of us for breakfast, if you want me to actually do this you've got to promise you're all going to stay in here."

She got no answers, as everyone was either trying to get the boys to stop screaming, or they were Morgan and already distracted by the baby in her arms, and that meant she could leave without issue. Her plan wasn't actually to make something nice for everyone, perhaps she'd make something decent but nothing too much because she felt that the kids didn't deserve it overall, but her plan was derailed as she entered the kitchen and checked her phone, finding it odd that no one had called her to tell her what was going on. Except, as she found out, someone _had_ indeed called her, and her phone had been placed on silent overnight to prevent it from waking kids up while they were sleeping.

It was a singular call she'd missed, and she'd gotten one voicemail in return from it. Once she was in the kitchen she opened the message and went to listen to it on speakerphone, hearing the stern voice of her husband coming from the receiver—"I suppose you not answering means you don't care if I come get you today or not, the roads are still bad and I would rather not risk your life if you're not at home. Let me know where you are so I can decide."

As her phone asked her if she wanted to repeat the message or simply delete it, she glanced from its screen down to O'wain, who had let go of her once they'd entered the kitchen and was now hanging around on the handle into the fridge. "He doesn't want to risk my life if I'm here? What is he thinking? It's Christmas, we need to spend it together as a family, he's got to…he needs to…" She couldn't bring herself to finish what she was saying before she was rapidly messaging him to tell him where she was and that he needed to not go home and instead come spend the day with her there at her brother's house.

Whatever course of action he was going to take, she wouldn't know until he got around to responding, whenever that might have been.


	6. Bitterly Cold

The shift was over, morning had come, and the reality of the situation was that the roads throughout Ylisstol were in no shape for anyone to be driving on, unless they had massive chains on their tires and the patience of a saint. Lon'qu may have grown up understanding how to handle inclement weather when he had to, but he'd done that in Ferox, where they actually knew how to take care of roads before the snow fell. In Ylisse, there wasn't as much of an understand as to what to do to prepare for snowstorms, and therefore the roads got a lot nastier and harder to handle quicker, making it treacherous for anyone, including people like him, to go out.

It made for an interesting dilemma he had to face when it came to the shift ending and him needing to go home. He was fairly certain his wife wasn't at their house, because if she was he had no idea how she would have gotten there in the first place, but did he really want to go hunt her down just to have to stay out on the roads longer? His phone call he made to her came without an answer, and that had happened right before his shift ended, which meant that he could either wait around for her to give a response, or he could just head back to their home and get some peace and quiet without anyone bothering him.

Driving on the roads wasn't optimal, but with how many people were stranded at the station right then, he wasn't interested in sticking around. "Now that I'm no longer expected to be here, I'm heading home," he told Chrom after finishing up his work and having the person already there that was going to be working the next shift, earning a surprised look from the head of the station. "Don't give me that look, I know what I'm getting into."

"I know you are, but what about…you know, you'll have to go to my house if you're leaving here, that's where Lissa and your son are, and you can't take either of them from there until the rest of us get there." Chrom wasn't going to allow this leaving to happen without trying to convince him otherwise, something Lon'qu was expecting but was already prepared to deal with by being brisk and heading straight for the door. "Wait, stop right there! Where do you think you're going, seriously?"

"I told you, I'm heading home."

Raising a hand to his face so he could pinch the bridge of his nose in disappointment, Chrom said, "Yes, you did in fact tell me that that, but I don't think you're actually doing that. Do you really want to go out in that mess out there?"

"Not particularly, but I would rather be home than here." Already he was at the door, opening it despite the sound of several people running up behind him. "What, can all of you just let me do something of my own for once? Why does everything around here end up being a large group affair I have to deal with?"

Clearing her throat, Cordelia had something to say about what was being discussed. "As the only officer currently manning the station, I must forbid you from going out on your own! We here of this police force cannot lose someone like you simply because you want to get away from the rest of us, so close that door and stay right where you are, safe and sound!"

"As the officer who just stayed up all night so that you all could sleep and try and have a normal evening, I refuse to listen to you." He didn't act like he was tired, it was barely noticeable that he'd been up overnight, and when he gave a piercing glare towards Cordelia she gasped in shock. "You, and all the rest of the people here, will manage just fine without me. I am going home, and nothing you say or do will make me reconsider."

"I refuse to let you go! If you step outside this station I…I'll…" Cordelia's sentence came to a halt as she didn't have any legs to stand on with her threat, and she sighed in defeat when she saw his glare hadn't lightened up even slightly. "I don't know what I'll do, but I do know that I don't want you leaving without someone ensuring you make it hime safely."

Chrom raised his eyebrows at what he was hearing, looking towards Cordelia at a loss for words. Lon'qu noticed this and, considering it a victory for himself, proceeded to take another step to being out of the station and towards freedom. However, before he could make it to safety, the other people who'd chased him down had something to say. "I could always follow him, I guess," Stahl offered, sounding unsure of himself and doing nothing but frustrating Lon'qu over how big of a deal him leaving had become. "I'd go slow, but I could do a patrol of town while I'm out there, then swing by wherever it is he's going to make sure he made it, then come back and let you know everything's fine."

"I don't want _both_ of you being gone when I'm the one who's responsible for your safety," Cordelia replied, but she began tapping a hand against her leg as she thought about what possibilities that opened up. "But, at the same time, since everyone's here right now and you two are the only ones here who have practice driving in these conditions, maybe we could make this work out…"

"There's no need to have him follow me home. I'm a grown adult, I know where I live and how to get there." Another step towards the door, but all progress he just made was halted when Chrom reached out and grabbed him, holding his arm back so he couldn't proceed much further. "Come on, for the love of everything! I've spent all night playing mediator to the broken system here in this town, let me leave and get some rest where I want it!"

"Lon'qu, your safety matters to most of us here, we aren't going to let you leave without making sure everything will be fine wherever you go. Cordelia has the right idea in refusing to let you leave on your own, but as for what we need to do here I'm at a loss." Had he been looking, he would have seen Cordelia's face light up for a second at the praise, before she went back to her deep thoughts on how to proceed. "Besides, wouldn't you rather stay here longer where you're with people who care about you, rather than—"

"No. Stop this at once. I am going home, regardless of what you all think." Jerking his arm out of Chrom's grasp, Lon'qu set his sights firmly on the door, ready to leave and get away from this nonsense he wanted no part of, but as fate would have it, another intruder would get in his way. When he felt someone jump on his back, his immediate reaction was to try and knock them off, but the person's momentum was enough to push him forward and almost to the ground, only saved by the fact that he wasn't physically weak. "What is it with everyone here and refusing to let me do as I want? Why is that?"

"If you're leaving, you're taking me with you!" Maribelle's declaration was given breathlessly, almost as if she was acting without thinking. "I cannot stay here any longer, I need to get out of this place, I need to get back to my children and to spend the day with them! Take me with you, please!"

At the sound of her voice, he tensed up, now unable to get her off of his back because he knew if he hurt her in any way, there would be severe consequences he would have to face. "I have no intentions of going to where your children are, ask one of these others so insistent on coming with me to take you there if you need to go so badly."

Her grip on him didn't loosen up at all, although she was now getting pulled off by Cordelia. "Hey, Maribelle, why are you so desperate to go with him?" she asked, finding it rather hard to pull her off of his back with how tightly she was clinging to him. "Is something the matter where the children are? As the officer on duty, I could force my hand and insist on going to check on them if needed."

"Nothing's the matter with them, I just need to get there!" For everyone listening to her, it seemed like Maribelle was trying to be the best mother in the world, risking her life to spend a holiday with her children, but for people who knew her better, there was clearly some underlying factor into her behavior. "I demand that Lon'qu take me there, now!"

"Find your own way there, I'm not going." His denial was spoken in the same tone everything else he'd said was given, and it was obvious that he wasn't amused by everything that was actively happening around him. "Now get off of me and let me leave as I please."

"If he goes, I'm following him to make sure he gets home safely. I think that's what needs to be done here." Speaking with audible hesitation, Stahl's confidence in his thought hadn't grown any since he'd first given a voice to it, but when he looked at Cordelia, who stopped trying to fight with Maribelle to give him a wide-eyed look and a smile, he could feel that she thought his idea was correct. "I could use someone coming with me, maybe…I mean, if I'm going out, I probably should make sure there aren't any crimes happening out there."

Before someone had a chance to suggest themselves as his lucky companion, Chrom had jumped to agreeing with what was being tossed around. "It's not the optimal idea, but if Lon'qu insists on leaving I suppose it would be smartest and safest if we made sure he made it home in one piece, using someone else who's willing to go out." That part of what he had to say was fine, and there wasn't anyone who was going to pick a fight about that; it was what came next that showed that Chrom wasn't going to allow his officers to select what they did or who they rode with. "Cordelia, as the officer currently responsible with manning the station, I would rather you not go out, but you are the one who initially raised this from being a family dispute to a work-related one, so perhaps it'd be best if you went with."

"She can ride with me, can't she?" Just from hearing Stahl's question, Chrom shook his head, causing both Stahl and Cordelia to look at him in surprise. "What? Why not? She'll keep me company, and then Maribelle can ride with Lon'qu."

"Except Maribelle isn't employed here and I'm not risking a civilian life in this nonsense. Cordelia can ride with Lon'qu, but as I respect that he has issue with being trapped in a car with her and only her…" He looked past everyone to see where the rest of the people had gathered, ignoring the crestfallen and broken looks the two were giving him. "How about we have someone that wouldn't be separated from a family member if they went go with? Perhaps we could get Ricken to do it, or maybe Gregor since he's here and I'm sure he'd make for an interesting ride companion."

"Yes, any of them are fine people, but I don't understand why you can't make one of them ride with Lon'qu so I can ride with Stahl." Behind her back, Cordelia was crossing her fingers that what she'd said would get Chrom to change his mind, or at least not throw any other names into the mix.

However, it was not meant to be, as a particular individual caught Chrom's eye at that moment and he called out, "Oh, Gaius! Come over here for a moment, will you? I have a special job for you if you're up for the task!" At the mention of his name, the two shared a sigh and a glance, hoping for the best and expecting the worst, and Chrom delivered exactly what they were fearing once Gaius, confused, came over to the group. "We need someone to ride with Lon'qu and Cordelia to get him home, then to _supervise_ Cordelia and Stahl on their ride back to the station."

An almost devious grin appear on Gaius' lips as he heard what Chrom had to say, and he looked to the people who'd been mentioned to see their reactions, not disappointed in the slightest to see that they were all not thrilled with what was being tossed around. "Yeah, I think I can manage doing that for you, no repayment needed or anything." The wink he gave towards Cordelia made her squirm, as she knew that he was going to find enjoyment in being somewhere alone with her that Stahl was not.

"Can't we find someone else? I mean, I think Ricken would love to get away from this place for a bit." Cordelia was trying her hardest not to sound desperate, but she knew that this was her punishment for all the times she'd feigned interest in Gaius while others were around, rather than playing it safe and showing her interest in Stahl. She saw a second wink come from Gaius at the same time Chrom shook his head in denial of the suggestion, and it was then that she knew her fate was sealed. "Oh, all right, I suppose it can't be helped. I'll get my things and be ready to go in a moment, but before I do…"

"Don't worry about what's being left here, I'll keep an ear out for pressing calls that need an officer's attention." Waving his hand towards the hallway where the offices were located, Chrom smiled at Cordelia, not noticing the almost pained expression she was wearing. "You're doing a helpful thing here, going out and supporting one of our own like this. Be proud of what you're doing!"

She bit her tongue and refused to say what it was that she'd thought about the matter, not wanting to cause more of an issue than had already been raised with this. Besides, Maribelle was striking up a fuss about not being allowed to go, and having two displeased voices going off would just cause more of a headache than already had been started. Getting ready to head out was quick and easy, and when Cordelia came back from her office she saw all the men who were also leaving ready and waiting for her, with Chrom at their side thanking them for their understand and cooperation.

Going out into the snow was a wake-up call for how bad the conditions really were, as all of them were trudging through drifts that came up closer to their waists than they normally got in Ylisstol. "It was like this last night when I came out here," Gaius said, wrapping his arm around a shivering Cordelia as he spoke, her pushing him off mid-step to cause him to stumble. "Hey, what's up with that! You could use the warmth, couldn't you?"

"I'd rather get hugged by Lon'qu than you." A pause, where she stopped in the middle of a drift and looked towards Lon'qu, who was already brushing the snow off of his car so that he could leave. "Not like I mean any offense by that, Lon'qu, it's just that, well, you don't exactly enjoy my company and hugging you would be awkward."

"You can go ahead and remain silent for the rest of the time we're out here, I don't want to hear anything from you, or from him." He hadn't even bothered to look at them as he addressed them, that was how unhappy he was that he had to bring people out into the snow with him when he just wanted to get home. "The faster I get out of here, the faster you two get away from me, and I'm not going to be going fast if I'm having to listen to you."

"It's only for a little bit, you can survive this!" Already having gotten his vehicle relatively cleared off thanks to where he'd parked in the shadow of the building, just shielded enough from the storm as it had blown through, Stahl had his driver's side door open and was waving towards Cordelia. "I'll meet you at his place and bring you back here, just like we discussed inside! You can make it through this!"

Grumbling at what he'd just heard being said, as well as slightly upset at how he'd been pushed aside like he meant nothing, Gaius came up behind Cordelia and grabbed her in another hug, this one in full view of Stahl, who couldn't tell if she was enjoying it or not and felt like he shouldn't have been watching. He didn't let go until that other vehicle was out of the parking lot, and once his arms were no longer wrapped around Cordelia she spun to glare at him, still respecting Lon'qu's wishes of her being silent. While she was capable of that, he wasn't going to do it so easily. "You can't keep leading him along like that, dude thinks you've got something for him when you really don't. How could anyone, honestly?"

Predictably, she didn't respond, partially due to not wanting to get on that topic with him and partially because Lon'qu was getting into his car and she knew that he'd leave them there at the station if he had the chance. Without a word in Gaius' direction she got in the backseat of the car and expected him to go around and get into the front seat; however she hadn't considered that he was that desperate to get a conversation in with her and that he would try climbing in next to her, only to be hindered by the bulky child's seat in the way. It was reason for her to thank her lucky stars that something had gone right in all of this mess, but she barely had enough time to get that thanks to Naga through her mind that she was regretting giving it.

Lon'qu was determined to get home at any cost, and if it meant driving recklessly (yet lawfully, he wasn't stupid and he knew who was in his car with him) that was what it was going to take. Turns were slippery and hazardous due to the snow on the roads, something that his car was prepared for to an extent, but when it became clear that the roads just weren't safe at the moment he had to decide to either slow down a bit and get home safe, or keep going as he was and tempt fate. With every passing second that he could see the woman in his rearview mirror he grew more desperate to get home and away from her, and whenever he turned his head to check his clearance on the far side of his car he'd see the man in the passenger seat and find it within him to press on a bit harder, a bit faster.

Ylisstol was quite the large town, sprawling out over many miles in all directions, and getting from where the station was up to the neighborhood he lived in was already a long enough drive in perfect conditions. The snow was only making things take longer, even if the roads were empty of any other drivers the entire time, and just when Lon'qu felt like he was finally getting comfortable on the slick roads even with his car's preparation for the conditions he took a corner a bit too fast, sending them skidding across all lanes of traffic in the road, which were thankfully entirely clear of everything but snow.

"Do you think you could maybe not do that?" Cordelia asked, bracing herself for the backlash for speaking when she'd been told to be silent. "I do have a job I need to return to once we're done getting you home, and you pulling stunts like that won't let me get back."

"Does it look like I intended on almost wrecking? What kind of fool do you take me for?" Having to take in many deep breaths to keep himself calm, knowing that letting frustration get the best of him while he was behind the wheel would only lead to trouble, Lon'qu glanced in the mirror and saw Cordelia's pale, almost scared face in its reflection. It was then that he realized that she wasn't considering him a fool, and she didn't think he'd meant to do what he'd done—she just didn't want to be there with him as much as he didn't want her there. "Okay, sorry about that. We're almost to the house, which means there's not much more of this you have to deal with while I'm driving."

"Oh yes, because getting to your house is what I want to do. I want to be back at the station where I'm safe and warm, not stranded in your driveway because—" Whatever had been Cordelia's original thought was cut off entirely when Lon'qu slammed on the gas pedal and sent them sliding through the intersection once more, getting back on the correct side of the road before they were back on their way. As she tried to collect herself to continue what she had been saying, she could feel the road conditions beneath their tires not getting any better than they'd been to start, and she feared that opening her mouth to say anything else would result in them sliding across the road once more.

"Dude, I get it, none of us want to be in this position right now but don't you think you could be driving a bit more carefully? We all want to live past today." While Cordelia might have been afraid to speak, Gaius was finding his voice to call attention to the unsafe conditions they were speeding through. "You might be some high-and-mighty foreign driver who's got a ton of snow-driving experience, but you can't play with all our lives like this."

Skidding to a stop after slamming on his brakes, nearly causing a single-car wreck in the process as the back half of the car almost fishtailed around as it stopped, Lon'qu pounded his fist down on the steering wheel as hard as he could, honking the horn as he did. "I was not the one who insisted on joining me as I went home today. If you want to criticize someone for playing with lives, speak with your girlfriend in the backseat."

"She's not…okay, seriously listen to me on this one." He wasn't going to look back and see whatever disgusted or horrified reaction Cordelia had to that comment, it wasn't something Gaius needed in his life in that moment. Right then, what he needed to do was talk sense into Lon'qu so they could make it to his house without any more brushes with death. "You need to get back to driving, safely, not speeding and not trying to win some race to get there first. And once we're there, you need to let us in until our ride back to the station comes to pick us up, and the next time I see you around at work you're going to pay for what you've done today."

"Is that a threat?" Just as Lon'qu was going to resume driving and consider actually being more careful with their lives, Gaius had gone and said something that did nothing but anger him. "If it is, you two are more than welcome to walk home from right here. I'm nearly to my house, I no longer need your supervision."

Not wanting to make the situation worse, Cordelia reached up to grab Gaius' arm, but she was brushed away by both men at once. "Please, you two, don't start a fight right now, in the middle of town after a snowstorm. Let's just forget about all this and get to where we're going, nice and safe, hm?"

"We can forget about it, sure, for now. But I stand by what I said, next time I see him he's paying for this." For being so quick to talk such a big game, Gaius was even quicker to repent in the face of an enraged man, and when he saw the sheer animosity bubbling within Lon'qu when he glared at him and demanded that he and Cordelia both get out of the vehicle, right then, he started apologizing like he hadn't ever apologized before. Enough was enough, though, he'd pushed just a bit too far and was being forced to face the consequences of what he'd said without a second chance.

And that was how the two of them ended up out in the bitter cold, in the middle of a snowpacked road that only the vehicle driving off in the distance had traveled since the snow fell. "I-I cannot believe you just _did_ th-that!" Cordelia screamed, her teeth chattering almost instantly after being forced to exit the vehicle. "We are going to fr-fr-freeze out here and it's all your fault!"

"I'll admit, I did say something I shouldn't have, but he's being unfair in leaving us here." Crossing his arms over himself as he started shivering, Gaius thought about how Lon'qu most likely didn't feel even slightly guilty for dropping them off where they were, and now how they had to contact someone to come get them—and how the person who'd be getting them was easily the next person on the list of people he didn't want to talk to. He looked to Cordelia, seeing her face bright red from the cold and her whole body trembling as she looked at him in disappointment, and the first thought that crossed his mind was something he knew better than to entertain. "I just don't know what to do from here."  
"We-we're gonna try and get out of the cold, that's what," she replied, starting walking down the street as if it were a sidewalk, nearly wiping out as she slid on ice. He shrugged and began to follow her, neither of them entirely sure where they were thanks to the snow covering most landmarks they'd recognize. With every slippery step the bone-chilling cold got to them more, to the point that within minutes they were wrapping themselves around the other to try and share what limited body heat they had, and the first store they saw that had its sign on they saw as a place of salvation.

That was, until they got to the front door and saw that the place was closed for the Christmas holiday. Banging his head on the glass at the horrendous timing for getting evicted from the vehicle like they had, Gaius let loose a decent-length string of curses that caused his breath to fog up the glass in front of him, which only made the situation feel more dire. "We're going to freeze out here, and it's my fault for it," he admitted, stepping back from the glass to draw a frowning face in the fogged-up glass. "I'm so sorry Cordelia, if I hadn't been such an ass to that guy we'd be at his place by now."

She was shivering far too hard to respond, her lips starting to go blue from the cold, and she was frantically trying to get something to pull up on her phone. The moment she seemed to get it to work, she showed her screen to him: there was a store that was open just a couple blocks away from their current location, they just needed to get there as fast as they could to not freeze to death. It wasn't well-thought out, but it was their only choice given that the person expected to pick them up could still have been all the way across town at the time, and there was no chance they'd be able to get Lon'qu to come back for them.

With every step they took towards their salvation, it was clear that the cold was getting to Cordelia a lot more than it was to Gaius. While he would consider himself freezing cold, he wasn't in nearly as bad of a condition as she was, which had only gotten worse as they'd been outside longer, to the point where she was barely standing upright even as she was walking. "We can do this, don't give up on me now," he had to keep reminding her, grabbing onto her hand that was frozen to the touch due to her not having gloves or large enough pockets to hide it in. "We're going to m-make it and you're going to be fine."

Her weak smile in return was given with almost no confidence, and it put the seriousness of what he'd done into perspective. He hadn't had the slightest clue that she'd get so cold while she was outside like she was, but at the same time he should have assumed it as she was wearing a light coat and had almost no insulation in any of her other clothing. She wasn't prepared for the elements, she was prepared for a party that shouldn't have turned into a shift at the station that had since become an escort mission gone wrong, and now she was slowly freezing to death even as they walked. He swore right then that no matter what happened to them after this, he wasn't going to force her into anything that she had no interest in being a part of, because her life was more valuable than he'd given it credit for before this.

The clerk at the convenience store they'd walked to was almost in shock to see them come in the door, and worked quickly to get them somewhere they could warm up without it being too much of a shock to their systems. He told them that, although he shouldn't do it, he would let them sit in the back office until they were suitably warmed up, and if they wanted to get wet clothes off (as their pant legs were soaked through with snow and weren't helping the fact that they were freezing) they were more than welcome to it. It was a thoughtful gesture, but in that moment it didn't feel like it was going to be enough.

What they needed right then was actual, genuine medical help, especially once they were settled in the office with all their wet clothes off and the heat cranked up as high as it could be in there, and yet Cordelia was sitting with glassy eyes, almost unresponsive even as Gaius was still assuring her things would be fine. Her hands were so cold that, even as he got warmth back in his own, hers were still frozen when he touched them, and her cheeks weren't much better; seeing her doing nothing to warm herself back up made him wish there was something, anything he could do to help.

It required getting the clerk to provide them as much hot water as he could, but he knew he had to swallow his pride and take things a step further than just trying to fix things himself. He knew that calling the emergency line would simply put him through to the station, which meant that there was one option for who to call in that moment, and he wasn't going to do it on his own phone. It wouldn't be seen as urgent if he did, and would probably be ignored a couple of times.

When the call was placed off of Cordelia's phone, however, it went straight to voicemail, the other end apparently busy. "Really? Of all the times for you to be calling someone…now?" Gaius said to himself, trying to make the call again while also keeping Cordelia as awake as he could manage. "Who in the world would you be talking to at this moment?"

As it turned out, Stahl was sitting in front of a darkened house, his phone against his ear as he tried to contact who should have been actively inside of the home at that moment. "This is really weird," he commented, hearing the tone that he was getting a call while making one of his own. "Normally no one wants to talk to me, and now I'm trying to talk to someone while someone else is trying to talk to me! I can't get distracted right now, I have to make sure they're okay, especially since it doesn't seem like they're home and if they've got that baby out with them in this cold…"

Little did he know that worrying about where that baby was wasn't what he should have been focusing on, and when that line picked up he was greeted with exactly why that was.

* * *

Morning had come earlier than expected, thanks to the children in the house waking up and running into the main room to get their holiday festivities underway, but being woken up by them wasn't as disorienting for Vaike as waking up back in the bed he'd originally gone to sleep in was. He was pretty sure he'd gotten out of the bed and moved into the other one, that was something he distinctly remembered doing at one point in the night, alongside hearing the baby screaming and the conversation that he knew he'd had. Yet there he was, in that bed alone and without any proof that he'd gotten up at all.

He must have sat up too fast or too loudly, because he was greeted with a snorting laugh once he was sitting upright in the bed. "It's about time you woke up, I thought you'd gotten possessed or something with how much you were walking around here in your sleep. Unless you weren't actually sleeping for any of that."

"I, er, wasn't aware I was doin' anythin' of that sort, sorry." Brushing his hair out of his face so he could look across the room (which was only dimly-lit thanks to the snow that had pushed itself up against the window overnight) and see Sully's somewhat amused expression looking back at him. "Say, how'd I end up back over here? Wasn't I over in that bed with ya at one point?"

"Does it look like there's enough room in this bed for both of us? The moment you realized you couldn't get comfortable you got back where you belonged and went right back to sleep over there." She laughed, standing up and leaving the bed a disaster behind her, sheets pulled up and blankets all tangled together. "Honestly, if you didn't mention it right now I would've just figured you'd been sleeping through that whole damn thing. What an awkward conversation you wanted to have."

"Me, sleepin' through that? No way, that was all with me wide awake. You're the one I figured was sleepin' still, with me havin' t'wake you up to even get talkin' with ya." What they'd discussed was still fresh in his mind, and it wasn't going to be something he'd forget so easily; he'd put into words something he'd been thinking about and she'd said something that put everything into perspective a bit. They were both looking at an outside situation with two different focuses, and now they knew the way the other person felt about everything. There wasn't really anything they could do with that information, but at least they had it for when it could become relevant to their lives.

Right at that moment, though, what was necessary was getting through the day until it'd be safe for them to drive home. There wasn't any need to be caught up on those things they'd talked about, and it would have done them both best to forget they'd even had that conversation. "We should probably get out there and see what kind of nonsense this family does for the holidays, before one of them bursts in here expecting us to join them." Standing beside him now, Sully offered a hand to him so that he could come to his feet, and after they both properly arranged themselves back in the previous day's clothes (as they were both bad at remaining dressed overnight, and going out into the house looking like a mess would be a bad impression) they opened the bedroom door, unsure of what the sight on the other side would be.

Three kids were seated on the floor, each with a bag in front of them that they were digging through, while the smallest child was sitting on her father's lap in one of the chairs, him showing her the contents of a fourth bag. When the door closed behind the two, everyone in the room looked towards them, kids excitedly yelling that they were awake. "Glad t'see y'all didn't freeze in there or decide y'didn't want anythin' t'do with us out here," Donny said with a smile at the couple, watching as they awkwardly stood there by the bedroom door, looking at what had greeted them. "Go on ahead and sit down wherever ya want, we ain't gonna be picky 'bout it. The kids know t'give y'all some space."

Even with that being said, it was still hard to get to where they could sit down and be comfortable, thanks to how the three on the floor were sitting with their things. After nearly stepping on a couple limbs in the attempt to get to the open seats in the room, they were still faced with the reality that this wasn't where they belonged, they shouldn't have been seeing other kids reacting to their gifts, they should have been at their house, with their daughter, giving her all the things they'd gotten for her. "Hey, can we give gifts to them since they're here?" Yarne asked loudly enough to draw everyone's attention to him, which made him shrink back. "I…mean, I have a gift for them!"

"If it's the blanket you have from the camp, you can keep it." Sully was going to put a stop to that whole discussion again, she'd already had to have it the day before and she wasn't going to enjoy having to have it a second time. "You needed it when you took it and it's now yours to protect you forever, got it, kid?"

"Except he's not allowed to take it out when we go near horses," Sil chimed in, nudging her older brother as she spoke. "So all he does is cry when we're near them, because he doesn't have his blanket there for him."

"I don't cry, I just get scared I'm gonna see that happen again!" Nudging her right back, Yarne sounded like he was about to cry right then. "It was so bad, I got so worried when it happened that I needed to have something to keep me safe."

What he was hearing was processing through his mind slowly, as if it was adding to a memory he'd been building from bits and pieces of a story he'd been treated to, and once what the kids were referring to made sense in his head Vaike looked to Sully and made sure he had his hand on her leg before he said anything at all. "Why's this the first I've heard that one a' these kids was there t'see what happened?" he asked as quietly as he could, although with how normally loud he was it was still fairly audible. "Other than the one that's the reason for why it happened, anyway."

"Maybe because it wasn't important in the end?" she suggested in return, giving the best answer that she could because she didn't know or, more accurately, didn't remember.

Vaike shifted where he sat, his grip on her leg tightening up a bit. "I think that'd be pretty important, but how would I know? Not like I was there or anythin', huh?" If he could have, he'd have asked Panne for clarification on what they were discussing because she was the source he knew everything from, but she wasn't in the room and therefore wasn't around to be asked anything. The kids themselves knew, but putting them back into that day on what should have been a happy holiday for them wasn't a fair decision on his part. In all honesty he shouldn't have been thinking about it to begin with, but talk of the blanket had made him curious and there was still so much about what had happened that day he didn't know…

 _And he wasn't going to forgive himself for not knowing_.

Staying home for that weeks-long trip up to the camp hadn't been his choice, but the station was already short one officer and couldn't be down a second, even if he felt like he needed to go. How much would have been different had he defied his captain and gone up anyway? Would there have been an accident to begin with? Or was that event set in stone, and him being there would have only allowed for him to be witness for things, rather than hearing them second-hand by someone who was focusing more on calming all the kids around her down than explaining everything.

He remembered being at the station, on duty, when a call came through on his personal phone, something that he should have ignored. But it was from the one number he wasn't going to ignore given the circumstances, and so he'd locked his office door so no one would come in to check on him while he was taking the call. Panne had been quick to explain there'd been an incident, and that he needed to get up to Ferox as fast as he could. His reaction there had been to say that he could get to the camp within hours, abiding by all laws and speed limits on the mountain roads up, but he was cut off with a stern insistence that it wasn't the _camp_ he needed to get to, but into the largest town near it.

This was several hours post-accident, he found out once he was there, because before Panne had taken the time to call him she'd already made sure that they were no longer at the camp and that all the help that was needed had been gotten. He wasn't there until the following day, though, because despite his insistence that he needed to go be with his wife he hadn't been allowed to get out of his shift at the station. The words Chrom said to him about it still rang through his mind as he thought about things: "She's a strong woman, whatever's happened to her she'll get through on her own. You can be with her tomorrow, but right now we need you here."

Except no amount of physical strength was going to restore lost time and memories, nor was it going to change the fact that in the time it took for him to get up to the town in Ferox decisions had been made without him (and, as Panne did explain, they were made with consent, but as was later proven that consent wasn't something the giver remembered).

Walking into that situation without any idea what to expect and finding what he did wasn't optimal at all, and even though it was months later he was still grappling with the fact that he'd been forced to be away for what had happened.

It was months later, and he was facing the fact that he still knew so little about the events surrounding the birth of his child, as well as having to accept that he just wasn't there for her when he should have been. He wasn't there at the start and he wasn't there now, and everything was completely out of his control because of it. "You okay? I didn't mean to make you zone out or anything like that, I just don't know who saw the damn accident and you know that," Sully said, placing her own hand on top of Vaike's. "Why are you even thinking about that right now, anyway? We shouldn't be focusing on that."

"I was just thinkin' 'bout how there's so much I don't know when it comes t'things relatin' back to Kjelle, and I…" He shook his head. "Y'know what, it's nothin'. I guess bein' here rather than at home's startin' t'really get t'me without me realizin' it sooner."

"Don't let it get to you then. She's somewhere safe, even if it's not with us, and we'll be home with her as fast as we can be. There's no way she's going to realize we're not around, and it's not like she'll remember a thing about today anyway. At least, if this was going to happen, it happened this year, huh?" Despite trying to talk big and sure of herself, he knew that Sully wasn't as confident in what she was saying as she should have been. "Hell, I'm sure Maribelle's able to give her a better first Christmas than we would, even if there's no gifts involved in it."

"Do you really think that?" he asked, to which she shrugged. "Ah, I get it, you're just sayin' stuff to try and get me t'stay calm 'bout everything, nice plan."

That made her begin to look wistful, like she had something to say that she was thinking twice about, but before she had a chance to say anything at all the youngest of the three kids on the floor jumped to his feet, holding a stuffed animal in his hands. "I'm giving this to you, 'cause you're here for us!" Bud chirped, putting the bear marked with the year down right in between the two of them. "You gotta name it for me, please!"

"Name it for you?" they both repeated, looking at each other, then the grinning child, then finally down at the bear. The boy eagerly nodded, waiting for either of them to say anything further, but when they didn't speak again he was left to dramatically sigh and sit back down. They weren't ignoring him, though, as they'd been given a request that they were trying to fulfill as fast as they could—something hard for two people who'd been rather uncreative in naming their only child. Giving her a family name as a first name and a mash-up of their names as her middle name had been the easy way out of things, and now they were expected to name a bear with even less time to think than they'd had for their kid?

"They'll name the bear when they want to," Sil told her younger brother, seeing how sad he was that he hadn't gotten an instant answer. "Good names take time, so don't rush them!"

"If you had asked them the same thing your brother had, you'd be crying because you'd want them done already. Don't speak to him like you're any better than he is." The voice startled anyone who hadn't noticed that Panne had entered the room, looking like she'd just rolled out of bed and was unamused to be awake. "Now what is with all this, you children should learn to be more patient when you're getting gifts. Being awake now just means longer for you to be working on chores."

That was enough to get the three kids to groan, Yarne apologizing for being awake while the other two started begging to not have to do chores. "Aw, c'mon Panne, y'can't punish 'em for wantin' t'get a move on with openin' gifts! It's not like we were doin' anythin' better tryin' t'keep sleepin', at least this way they're nice 'n quiet for later!" Donny laughed, holding up the child that had been on his lap so that Panne could take her for herself. "But if you're insistin' on them doin' chores…well, that ain't gonna be happenin' outside 'a this here house. The storm out there's still ragin' hard."

"I am quite aware it's still blizzarding, the power has yet to be restored and that would be one of the reasons for why that might be." Taking Kitte into her arms before holding her against her hip, Panne walked towards the front door, cracking it open to send the bitter cold and the sound of hissing wind into the house. "This is much, much worse than had been forecasted. I can only imagine the destruction in Ylisstol right now."

"Destruction?" His attention had turned from the bear and naming it to look at Panne, and all of the worst-case scenarios were beginning to flood Vaike's mind. "What d'ya mean, destruction? It's just a snowstorm! That's easy peasy t'deal with."

"If the snow is blowing this much around here, the amount of snow that must have fallen in town is crippling everything there. People might be trapped, dying, or worse, already dead. And your fellow officers, they don't quite know how to handle those kinds of road conditions, do they?" Panne closed the door and the sound of the wind subsided, but the air didn't warm up thanks to there being no power to heat the house. As she turned to walk back to the group, she made it a single step before stopping again, looking back over her shoulder towards the door. "I'm sure it's worse out here than it is in town, of course, but the fact remains that they are almost entirely incompetent drivers in the snow."

"So what? Not like any 'a them were gonna be out in this, it's Christmas! They're gonna be at home with their families and nice and warm in their homes!" It took him a moment to realize what he'd just said, and when he caught it he bowed his head and scratched at the back of his neck. "Sorry 'bout that, kinda forgot that we aren't exactly nice and warm in here right now."

"You've also forgotten that last night was the party at the station, which would mean people weren't 'nice and warm' at home anyway, but your apology for what you've said is accepted." When she turned back to face everyone, Panne was completely stone-faced and looked like she was about to walk away from the room to go back off by herself, but she surprised them all by sitting down on the floor with her children, setting Kitte down next to her so that she could use both arms to take gifts she'd given out for herself. "It's quite likely that very few of the people you work with are having scenes like this with their families right now, be thankful you're in a home at all and not stuck in the station."

"We wouldn't have been stuck at the station anyway, and you know that. You know we were planning on leaving here, picking Kjelle back up, and then going home for the night." Her focus was still on the bear over anything else, but that didn't mean that Sully wasn't capable of being involved in the conversation. "We would have been perfectly fine at home, and what happened to trap us here wasn't anyone's fault but our own."

Panne nodded, now holding onto some of the small toys that her children had allowed her to take from them. "That is correct, but you…do know that going home yesterday would have resulted in nothing but trouble for you, don't you?"

"What the hell do you mean by that? We would have made it home in time, the storm wasn't supposed to come in until late! Are you saying we would have been reckless trying to get home in time?" It came off more snappish than intended, and while she knew she should have apologized for that there was no time for Sully to do so, after Panne shook her head. "So then get to explaining what you mean!"

"I don't think y'should be soundin' so angry right now," Vaike cautioned, looking to his wife with compassion in his eyes. "She's just tryin' to make us feel better about things, I think."

"No, I'm actually speaking the truth on this. The storm came in earlier out here, and if it still raging here now, that would mean that it hit town and the surrounding areas earlier than expected as well. You two would have faced certain tragedy if you'd tried leaving here last night, and so you should be thanking the gods that everything fell in place for you to still be here with us today."

That got a cheer out of the children, and hearing their happiness at them being there and not frozen on the side of a road during a blizzard was enough to convince Sully that maybe, just maybe, things were better off the way they currently were. Yes, things weren't great and this was just another bad thing in a year of difficult things, but it was better than being stranded somewhere without friendly faces. "I'll thank them once I'm home and have my child in my arms, okay?" she said, before picking up the bear from next to her and setting it on her lap. "And for now, since there's nothing saying I can't, this little one here's going to be my replacement Kjelle until I have the real one back."

"Uh, Sully? Don't y'think that's a little weird?" Vaike was looking at her, his jaw hanging just a bit at the surprise of what she'd said, but her insistence made him realize that he wasn't going to be able to convince her to do anything else. "You're just copin' with this however you can, but that's a toy bear. Couldn't ya at least take the actual baby in the room?"

"I'm not giving her my child for the sake of her pretending she's hers, sorry." A protective hand found itself resting on Kitte's head as Panne shook her head at the suggestion that had been made. "The bear is perfectly acceptable, and if she keeps it after this it's no real loss to anyone, unlike if she tried keeping my child."

From there, the scene became more normal, nothing more being said to the couple there watching everything without anything to add for themselves. The family continued on with their holiday celebration, before breaking off to start doing chores even though there was no power in the house, and in the hustle and bustle of everyone doing their own things the two of them were allowed to sit there, still doing nothing. Occasionally the kids would approach them and ask questions or try using them as a means to get out of working, but they'd quickly be shooed away by one of their parents catching them slacking off, but even then their interruptions weren't minded too much.

That changed, though, when the next interruption wasn't from a child but was instead a phone ringing with a generic ringtone, meaning it wasn't anyone that was expected to call. Both of them checked their phones to see whose it was coming from, and Sully winced when she saw that it was hers—and that it was Stahl, of all people, calling her. "I don't know what he wants but I'm sure it's going to be something along the lines of wishing us a good day," she said, checking the time (just before noon) and the status of her phone's battery (nearly dead) before answering it with, "What're you calling me for?"

"Are you home right now?" he asked, thankful that he'd gotten an answer with his call. "I'm sitting outside your house right now and it looks really dark, but it's not like you guys to just disappear somewhere, and I got worried."

"No we're not home, we got stranded out at Panne's farm bringing her home yesterday. Thanks for the concern but…wait, why are you outside our house?" Sully looked at Vaike to see if he was reacting at all to what she was saying, but as he didn't have any clue what was being said on the other side of the call he was only looking surprised back at her. "Did something happen to it?"

"I got asked to do a patrol of town because the roads are undrivable, so I decided I'd come stop by to check on you two and the baby! Is she with you? Are you guys have a good Christmas even if you're not home?" Those were two questions that she wasn't sure how she was going to answer, but she knew that ignoring them both for the sake of talking about how bad the roads really were was a bad idea.

Sighing, she accepted that something had to be answered, and the first question was a much safer bet than the second one. "We, or rather, I asked Maribelle to watch her while we came out and did this, so she's safe with her and her family right now. If you want to see her, get in contact with Maribelle or Frederick, I don't have the time or battery on my phone to—"

"Huh, she's with them? But they were at the station when I left and she wasn't there with them…do you think they left her at their house?" Stahl didn't know that he was saying something he shouldn't have, given the situation that everyone was currently in, but he didn't have a chance to elaborate further and Sully didn't have a chance to question anything because her phone shut off right then, leaving the call hanging.

The loud, angry scream that followed the call's abrupt end was punctuated with the phone being flung across the room, hitting the wall and breaking instantly. "What kind of gift is that, finding out my baby's been _abandoned_ somewhere?" she yelled, jumping up and throwing the bear she'd had sitting on her lap so that it hit the exact same spot her phone just had. "When we get back into town, I am murdering Maribelle and there's nothing anyone can do to stop me. Come on, Vaike, we are leaving here right now."

"H-hold on a sec, Sully! I don't have any idea what's goin' on and you need t'explain everything 'fore we go ridin' out into a blizzard!" He was to his feet right after she was, trying to grab her to calm her down but there was no use. This was a mother who'd just found out her trust had been misplaced, and she wasn't going to calm down until she got justice for what had gone wrong, and she wasn't going to get that justice until they were set free from the storm outside.

* * *

 **A/N: In my heart I refer to the first part of this chapter as Lon'quest, but that's so bad because he ruins lives, where as Stahlquest in SDN had lives being saved**


	7. Frozen Hearts

Lissa never got any response from her husband in regards to her requesting that he come join them at Chrom's house, which bothered her immensely but she figured that pressing the issue further than she already had would only irritate him. However, she did receive messages from people he'd scorned, people he'd blown off in his attempt to get away from everyone, and when her brother called her asking her if she'd heard anything from him she had to admit that she hadn't. That she hadn't honestly wanted to. That she knew where she stood with him and that she and O'wain weren't the top priority that day.

"I'm rather sorry to hear you think like that," Chrom said, trying to remain professional even though this was his younger sister he was talking to. "But if you hear anything from Lon'qu, please do not hesitate to tell me or anyone else here at the station. We're missing him and two others right now, and Stahl's trying his best to find the others based on some shoddy directions he's been given. It's a…long story you'll have to hear later."

"Yeah, something tells me right now isn't the time for you to be catching me up on station gossip," she agreed, wanting to get off the phone right then so that she could resume what she should have been doing, rather than fielding phone calls. "You get back to whatever you're doing and I'll get back to what I was doing, okay?"

She could hear a deep breath taken in, followed by a simple request that made her heart hurt to hear: "That's fine, but before I go I want to speak to Lucina. Even if we don't make it home today I want her, and Inigo too, to know that their mother and I really do love them."

"I'm sure they know that without you having to tell them right now, but…" Lissa looked around the bedroom she'd barricaded herself in the moment that people had turned their attention towards trying to contact her, not wanting anyone to see or hear her as she was dealing with this nonsense. "Let me go down and get Lucina for you, just because you asked me to." He was thanking her on the other end multiple times, the sound of true desire to speak with his child in his voice, and once she'd headed down the stairs and found her niece she almost felt bad to hand the phone off to her.

Some voice in her head was telling her to try and find a way to reunite the family for the holiday, but she knew it wasn't possible as things currently were. She had eight children under her care at the moment, and even _if_ she were able to get through to her husband and get him to help her, there wasn't any way to safely transport everyone. Even with repeated trips, it would take getting into someone else's car and grabbing something out of it that didn't even belong to them to make things work, but then…what would come of that? Seven kids abandoned at the station as she, O'wain, and Lon'qu went back to their house, safe and sound? Six of those kids had their parents there, but the seventh _didn't_.

Just thinking about that seventh child made one of her fists curl up, a negative reaction she was starting to question the reason for. This was hatred she was harboring for a baby, an actual infant who hadn't done anything wrong to her—and whose parents, honestly, hadn't done anything wrong either. "Auntie Lissa, what's got you upset?" Inigo asked, as he had been sitting right with his sister when she received the phone from their aunt. "You don't look very happy right now, is it something to do with the call you got?"

"No, trust me, it's just your father calling," she replied, trying to unclench her fist but finding it impossible to do so. "Say, where did all the other kids get off to? You know Morgan can't play nice with anyone, but she's with everyone else? What's up with that?"

Inigo shrugged, showing zero investment in what was going on anywhere but with his sister. "Last I saw, Morgan and Cynthia were going to watch the little kids and, uh, that's really all I saw." He shrugged again, looking his aunt straight in the face as he added, "Knowing them, they're probably playing dolls with them, again. Like they always do."

While she was fine with the idea that the bigger girls were playing with the younger kids, Lissa was more than aware of the fact that she didn't see her son _or_ the other smallest child there in the room, and that meant that the girls had both of them there. Together. Like she did not want them to be. "Will you do me a favor and bring me my phone back once you two are done on it? I trust that you wouldn't do anything bad with it once the call's over, so could you really please?" It was slightly ridiculous, having to beg her nephew to do something like that, but she couldn't stand to wait around for the call to be over, having realized what was going on elsewhere in the house.

"I guess so," he told her, his eyes focusing on his sister and how she was nodding eagerly at whatever was being said on the other side of the phone. "If Lucy ever gets done talking, anyway! Can I _please_ get to talk to Father while he's calling?"

She left the room before she heard any response from Lucina, but she was certain that Chrom was on the line laughing at what he could hear of his son's demand. There weren't many places in the house that a group of six kids could be hiding without being noticed, and she hoped it wasn't the kitchen that they were playing in. That was the first place she checked, and nothing seemed to be amiss about it, eliciting a sigh to escape her—before she realized that just because they hadn't gone to the kitchen yet didn't mean they weren't planning on doing so soon.

They weren't anywhere on the lower floor of the house, she quickly came to notice, after searching every possible place they could have been. There were locked doors that she could have tried to get through, but if she was going to have to put up a struggle to bypass them and these other kids didn't have Lucina or Inigo helping them, it made no sense to assume that they'd found a way in somewhere. But if they weren't downstairs, that meant that they had to be upstairs, and she hadn't heard anyone come up while she'd been up there, nor had she heard anyone scrambling around when she'd started to come down. "There's got to be somewhere I'm not looking," she said to herself, standing at the foot of the stairs looking up them. "There's just no way they all made it up there without me noticing…"

The fear that they had gone outside flickered into her mind, and she scrambled towards the front door, throwing it open and seeing undisturbed snow on the other side. No one had been out there since the snow had stopped falling, which meant the kids had to have been in the house, unless they'd gone out into the back yard; checking to make sure they hadn't done that was now the top priority, and so she ran to the kitchen, seeing the back door firmly locked and sighing in relief that she found it that way. There wasn't any chance of them having locked it on themselves, she knew how difficult that door was to close when it was locked, and if Inigo or Lucina had locked the other kids out they would have fessed up to it by then.

That meant that upstairs was the only option there really was, and after checking to see that her niblings were still using her phone to speak with their father, she started up the stairs, putting enough force into every step that anyone would hear her coming. When she was halfway up the staircase she could hear what sounded like giggles coming from somewhere on the upper floor, which made her heart flutter to hear because it meant the kids were okay after all. She hadn't royally failed at babysitting all of them after all, even if she thought she had for a moment there.

Her approach to one of the bedroom doors up on the upper floor was halted when she heard what sounded like breaking glass on the other side of the hall. "What did you do?" Cynthia's voice called out, sounding panicked. "Oh my gosh Morgan you are going to be in so much _trouble_ when miss Lissa sees this!"

"I didn't do anything!" Morgan retorted, her voice raising over the sound of younger kids crying, startled by whatever had happened in the room they were in. "All I did was try to open the thing, I didn't know that—"

Closing her eyes as she tried mentally bracing herself for what she was about to see, Lissa opened the bedroom door that the kids were on the other side of, cracking open one eye to see Morgan and Cynthia standing in front of a broken glass-paned cabinet, one that was filled with little trinkets and expensive dolls. The door opening had stunned Morgan into silence, and Cynthia was looking at who'd entered with wide, fear-filled eyes. "Miss Lissa, she broke the cabinet," she said once she'd mentally registered who had come in. "She probably didn't mean to but she did. And she got glass everywhere, too."

Everywhere was a bit of an overstatement, but it was excusable as Cynthia was a bit panicked at what her twin had done. Of course, once Lissa approached and saw that there was glass directly in front of and touching the two youngest children in the room, she didn't think so much of the overstatement, bending down to carefully extract O'wain from the glass pile before the inquisitive boy decided he was going to try eating what had fallen on him. "Someone do me a favor and pick the girl up," she ordered, mentally blanking on what Kjelle's name was and also not wanting to show that she was beginning to think twice about being so negative towards the baby. "We need to make sure she isn't cut up or anything because of this."

Cynthia nodded, getting down next to Kjelle to pick her up, but as she knelt onto the floor she yelped in surprise, jumping back up and crying out, "I landed on some glass, ouch!" Her cry only fueled the fire of the two middle children in the room crying louder, which in turn made the baby (who was still on the floor) start screaming, overwhelmed with everything that was going on. It was then, while looking down at her in slight disgust, that Lissa noticed that the same glass that had pricked Cynthia's leg was dangerously close to where the baby was, and if anything were to happen to her…

"O'wain, sit still for a moment so I can fix things," she told her son, setting him on the bed in the room and hoping that he wasn't going to disobey her and cause more trouble. After a few seconds of him moving around but staying up on the bed, she felt comfortable enough to bend down again, this time to get Kjelle up off the floor, but as she picked the screaming baby up she could tell that something wasn't right with what she'd walked into.

Her fears were proven to be correct when she adjusted how she was holding the baby and felt the unmistakable feeling of blood on her hands, making her stomach churn. "M-miss Lissa, don't move at all," Morgan stammered, using a shaking hand to point at the glass that had collected at her feet after she'd lifted Kjelle up off the ground. "I d-didn't see that she'd moved her legs at all, she must've kicked them into the glass…"

"No, she couldn't have, there's no way that she could have!" Lissa didn't want to act brashly in the moment, she didn't want to flip around a small child to see the extent of her self-caused injuries, but she knew that she had to, so that she knew what to do. She'd done enough training in first aid to know how to handle this situation, she just needed to remain calm and sensible long enough to evaluate and treat what had happened. But acknowledging that something _had_ happened would require her to explain exactly what that was to the parents once they found out, and she knew she'd be held responsible then, even though it wasn't her fault at all.

She'd frozen in place, conflicted about what to do, and not even the confused questioning of what she was doing by her own child was going to break her from her internal panic. "Mama?" O'wain kept repeating, moving himself closer to the edge of the bed with every time he spoke, until there wasn't any more bed for him to sit on. Shakily, he stood on the bed's edge and reached for Lissa, but he wasn't on solid footing and he fell forward, his mother unaware of what was happening until she'd heard both Morgan and Cynthia gasp and yell out for her to try catching him before he fell.

There was a choice to be made, either dive and try catching him at the risk of losing hold of the baby she was already holding, or let him fall without doing anything. She was gathering that she was going to be in a lot of trouble for the damage she'd already caused, what good was it to her if she added even more damage to the list? Helpless in the situation, she had to watch her son fall straight into the glass shards that were on the ground, an outstretched arm he'd put out to try catching something for himself taking the brunt of the fall. Within a second of him hitting the ground he was screaming out in pain, which was only adding to the chaos that was unfolding in that bedroom.

Him falling caused the two kids downstairs to come running up to see what was going on, still on the phone with their father when they came through the door to see multiple people now with some blood on their hands (or legs), multiple children crying at varying volumes, and one shell-shocked adult who had pushed the baby she was holding off to the first person who'd take her in exchange for picking up her son and frantically picking out as much glass as she could from his hand and arm, cutting her own fingers open in the process.

"Uh, Father, do you think you can get someone to come help us?" Lucina asked, once she'd been able to process what she'd walked into. "It looks like there's been an accident and—"

"No, please no, don't tell him! Hang the phone up _now_!" She was speaking in her panicked state but Lissa didn't want to have her brother, and by extension everyone at the station, knowing what she'd allowed to happen completely on accident. If she hadn't been trying so hard to maintain some sense of composure she would have been crying just like almost everyone else, breaking down into tears about how she'd failed so badly as not just a babysitter but as a mother as well.

The look of fear and panic on her face was enough to get Lucina to heed her words, hanging up the phone without saying anything else to her father. Once she showed that she had ended that call, work to clean up the mess and try to restore everything to some kind of order had to begin, before small children started bleeding out to death. Getting someone else involved could wait until the severity of the situation was figured out.

But for Chrom, who'd been hung up on right as he was being asked to help, he wasn't there to see the scene for himself. He'd been relying on what his daughter was telling him, trying to listen to her voice rather than the screams and cries he could hear in the background; having her mention an accident, in his own home of all places, and be told to hang up when admitting to that was concerning, to say the least. "Why has everything had to fall apart right now?" he asked, clenching his phone in his hand and feigning throwing it into the ground. "It's Christmas, for Naga's sake, why can't things go right for this one day?"

"What's happening now?" Robin's attention had been on his own phone, but the moment Chrom had started speaking he'd begun to focus on him instead. "It's nothing to do with the others, is it? You said it could be up to hours before we heard more on that, there's no way they rushed into things…"

"No, it's nothing to do with them, sadly." Inside of his mind, Chrom was wishing that what had happened had been related back to the officers he'd sent out, but he'd heard what had befallen them and figured that they quite possibly weren't even rescued yet, let alone in a position to talk about what the outcome was. "It's the kids at my house. I was still on the call with Lucina and something happened, there was a lot of crying, and Lissa…I had to hear my own sister insist on keeping something from me." He took in a deep breath, steadying himself and trying not to let what he'd heard get to him too much. "We need to send someone there to check on them. Right now."

Robin looked around the office they were in, where it was just the two of them, and shook his head after a few moments. "There's no one we can ask. What, do you suggest we call up your brother-in-law and have him go check? He abandoned our officers in the snow! And Stahl, he's having to set that all straight as we speak, do you want him having to run from the hospital to your house before coming back here to update us on everything? Those are our options right now, Chrom! We don't have anyone to ask!"

"There's no need to raise your voice with me, I know both of those points." Bringing his free hand to his face to massage his forehead, Chrom weighed every option he had available to him before he said anything. "The roads are bound to not be as snow-packed as they were before, perhaps one of us could drive slowly and go investigate? It's not that far of a trip, although it would be two, maybe three times as long in any kind of snow without the proper vehicle for it. I could always make the trip if no one else volunteered."

"If no one else…really? No one's going to volunteer to drive on snowy roads to see what's happened at your house! What we need to do is get through to someone that's there. Call your sister again, see if she'll talk to you about it?" It was a better suggestion than risking lives was, but Chrom had the sinking feeling that he knew what would happen if he tried calling: he'd be ignored, forced to go to voicemail, and he wouldn't get the answers he was looking for. Still, there was no harm in giving it a shot, which he did, and when he reached the exact outcome he'd expected he was only moderately disappointed.

He was, of course, more worried than that. "I'm going to see if anyone has any other ideas for what to do. Once all the other parents are made aware of the situation, they might be able to help with solving this." He went to leave the room but Robin stopped him with a plea, a begged demand to not do anything reckless. "I'm surprised that you aren't getting over-emotional about this, seeing as your daughters could be involved in this," he said, looking at Robin with a shaky, half-hearted smile. "Don't you want to know they're okay?"

"I do, I really do, but I know that jumping to brash decisions won't get any of us any closer to knowing what's going on. We have to handle this logically and carefully, and face it, your track record of handling things 'carefully' today is pretty poor." Robin was referring to the other chain of events they were still trying to sort out, the ones that they knew had started with escorting someone home and had ended with a distress call because people had been abandoned in the snow while unprepared. "Rushing out and trying to go see things for ourselves will just end up with more people needing rescuing."

"What if not trying leads to something else, though? What if we stay here, where we're safe and warm, and whatever's happening out there only gets worse?" Still by the office door, Chrom glanced at it and asked himself if it was worth leaving when in the midst of this kind of argument, but decided that it was best to stay where he was. After taking his seat next to Robin once more, he shook his head and said, "I hope that Lissa and the kids aren't in any kind of real trouble. But Lucina wouldn't say that unless they were, and Lissa wouldn't act like that unless—"

He was cut off by the door to the office coming open, the sound of a cough to announce someone's presence filling the air. "Chrom, Robin, do either of you know what's going on right now?" Frederick asked, trying to maintain his composure as he spoke. "Maribelle's out there losing her mind and, quite frankly, it's beginning to concern me."

"Did my sister contact her, by chance?" Chrom suggested, gears in his mind starting to turn. "Because I happened to be talking to Lucina with Lissa's phone when something, I don't know what, occurred and when Lucina attempted to tell me about it she was silenced by my own sister."

It took a moment but Frederick ended up shaking his head at the question. "No, she wasn't approached by Lissa, but rather she called her herself to check in on the boys. All was fine for a few sentences before she started screaming at her, and now she's locked herself in my office and won't come out, and the screaming hasn't stopped yet. Do you…do you think that whatever happened affected one of our children, is that why she's having such a negative reaction to it?"

"I wouldn't jump to that conclusion, we all know Maribelle well enough to know that if it did have something to do with them she would have left already." Robin was once again trying to be the one to convince everyone to calm down and handle things rationally, but he could tell just looking at Frederick that there was something more going on than he'd let on. "So if she's locked herself in your office, there's no harm done to your children, simple as that. But that leaves five others who could've been harmed, right?"

The two men he was speaking with weren't as quick at thinking in terms of numbers as he was, so he watched as they counted on their fingers who all was meant to be at the house under Lissa's care right now. Robin was certain that Chrom was going to count correctly, so he was focused on watching what Frederick did, waiting for the inevitable slip-up that he'd begun to suspect was about to happen. The way he knew the counting should have happened was the counter including their own children, then adding the other two pairs and the one solo child, resulting in a count of seven. But Frederick started with both thumbs out, and added six more fingers, which resulted in _eight_ being accounted for. "I suppose the only logical option here would be that something happened to O'wain," Frederick said, looking at his hands, going over who all he knew to be at the house a second time. "That would explain why Maribelle would be so upset but not upset enough to endanger herself."

"Or it could be whoever's not supposed to be there." Saying this caught Chrom off guard, and he looked to Robin with confusion in his glance, while Robin stared confidently towards Frederick, whose face was slowly growing more and more surprise at the accusation. "I've never seen someone start a count with their thumb on both hands out before, especially not you, so that was rather strange. Wouldn't that throw your numbers off?"

"Er, I suppose it would," he replied, looking at the eight fingers he was still holding up. "I know that it's just seven kids there, I must have simply made a mistake in what I counted with." That answer wasn't good enough for Robin, someone who thrived on deductions and solving cases through the use of observation, but Frederick was hopeful enough that he wasn't going to dig any further than he just had. "See, let me tell you who's there to prove my point…I assure you, it was merely a mistake."

Raising an eyebrow, Robin didn't say anything to counter him and instead invited him to go through with his insisted clarification of who was at the house. There was something he was waiting to see (or more specifically hear) happen, and he wasn't going to let Frederick off the hook until it had happened. "Are you sure this is necessary?" Chrom asked, still looking confused. "People make mistakes, you don't need to push him like this."

"Trust me, there's a reason I'm doing this as I am, just watch and let it unfold." Things were being played right into his hand and Robin normally loved for his investigations to be this easy, but there was a feeling to what was happening that wasn't sitting right with him. He closed his eyes for a second, inhaling through his nose as he silently prayed that the clues he was picking up were wrong, then exhaling once he thought he'd prayed long enough. "Go ahead and say who's there, I promise we won't take drastic measures if you say anything that isn't right."

Hesitating as he mentally went over who was supposed to be at the house, not who actually was there, Frederick's first instinct was to come clean about what had happened, before he could be called out on it by misspeaking. "It was Maribelle's idea to prioritize coming here over fulfilling her duty as a babysitter," he confessed, watching Robin relax and Chrom turn to look at him in his confused state. "She figured it would be innocent, a few hours spent socializing before going home and pretending nothing had ever happened. She wasn't accounting for a snowstorm to prevent us from getting back home."

"This isn't saying who's there that shouldn't be," Chrom pointed out, not quite connecting dots that Robin already seemed to have. "This is just saying that someone is there, and no one bothered telling me anything about it."

"How long have you known about this, specifically?" Frederick asked, overlooking what Chrom had said because he knew he needed to be the one to admit to it. "I've done my best to make sure it wasn't mentioned directly, yet here we are, you knowing what it is Maribelle and I have been hiding from everyone."

"I hadn't known anything 'specifically' until right now, before this it had been merely suspicion that you two had done something you shouldn't have. A few other things did factor into my conclusion, but the damning evidence was your miscounting, I'll have you know." Robin nodded, satisfied with what had happened. "So do what's right and explain to me and Chrom what you've done."

"It wasn't anything I did, it was Maribelle's choosing to do it, I already explained that part, if you weren't paying attention." Clasping his hands in front of his face, Frederick caught Robin's disgusted glare at him and swallowed down because of it, knowing that the moment of mercy might have been past him. "It only happened because Maribelle really did want to come to the station party, she wouldn't have shirked off babysitting otherwise, but they never came to pick their daughter up. She felt like she had no choice."

"Daughter…?" Chrom repeated, those gears finally turning in his head, and when he came to the conclusion Robin had reached long before him he slammed a hand down on his leg and shouted, "Gods damn it, are you telling me that Kjelle's at _my_ house and not with her parents? What happened to them?"

"What happened is that they never came to pick her up after driving Panne home. At least, that's what I assume they were doing, that's what we were told they were doing and I have no reason to believe otherwise." It felt almost like he was trying to defend people who weren't present from any unjust accusations, but Frederick knew that he shouldn't have been spending his time doing that. "And Maribelle, she didn't want to bring Kjelle with us here, so she tasked Lissa with watching her for just a few hours, which turned into an overnight and has had some sort of negative consequences."

He watched the other two shift uncomfortably at that revelation, but he was quick to clarify what he was certain they were jumping to assume. "She isn't harmed badly, but she's harmed enough to make it impossible to hide that something happened. Maribelle's reacting the way she is to this because Kjelle has ultimately been her responsibility, and she knows she will be in a lot of trouble once everyone's safely home."

"This would explain why Stahl mentioned stopping by that house in specific while he was out, by the way," Robin said, looking at Chrom as he spoke. "That was when things started coming together for me, and then Frederick's slip-up sealed the nail in that coffin. What a shame that this is how everything had to happen, parents and young child separated for a holiday, parents unaccounted for, child injured somewhere she shouldn't have been…what was it that you said earlier? It's Christmas, why can't things go right for this one day?"

"Stahl mentioned contacting them, so they're not unaccounted for so much as they're just not home, thankfully." That was one small positive Chrom had found in what Robin was saying, but its positivity wasn't enough to mask all of the negative things they were facing. "However, he also mentioned that the call he had got disconnected and he hadn't been able to contact anyone after that. That means that if someone has, in fact, happened to Kjelle, they're unaware of it."

Robin nodded along, taking in every word Chrom was saying and adding it to his own mental chain of events. "Let me get this straight, they didn't give permission for someone else to watch their child, they asked Maribelle to do it. Maribelle, who pawned her off to come be a socialite, who disregarded the history of everyone involved to get her way, who now has the hypothetical blood of a child on her hands? Does that sound right?"

"It does, yes," Frederick said in a muffled response, his hands pressed against his mouth as he'd started to turn pale at the way everything had unfolded. "I…need to speak to Maribelle about all of this, please excuse me."

His departure wasn't stopped by either of the other men, although they both got up to leave the office as well. "I'll go talk to our wives, see if they can contact anyone," Robin suggested, hoping his attempt to help solve the mystery of what was going on hadn't shaken Chrom too much. "Maybe one of them will be able to get through to Lissa to see what's happening, they'd be more reliable than Maribelle, at this rate."

"No, follow Frederick. You unearthed their secret, you can continue investigating it at the source. Leave no stones unturned, you're dealing with multiple families at this point." Once they were in the hallway, Chrom pointed towards Frederick's office, his stern finger enough to get Robin to sigh and follow it. He waited until he saw his investigator disappear from his line of sight before he turned back into the office, firmly locking the door behind him once he was inside.

There was something he felt he needed to do right then, as the police chief and as a friend.

* * *

For some reason, it seemed like Stahl got pulled into situations at the exact moment everyone else involved had no other ways to handle anything. The previous summer, he'd been expected to drive through a raging snowstorm to rescue people in a different country, and that had been the eye-opening experience to how many times things like that happened to him. Someone about to fall off a cliff and needs someone to help them, despite having had plenty of time to save themselves beforehand? Better call Stahl, he'll know exactly what to do at the risk of his own life.

What had happened that day, though, was a little different than that, as he'd already been out trying to make a difference when he'd been called to come rescue people that he knew pretty well. The moment that phone call dropped, he knew that there was no chance he was going to get to finish it, but it allowed for him to answer the call he was receiving right then, which might have gotten ugly had he waited a minute longer to respond. Actually, it had already been ugly when he did respond, so it could've gotten uglier and to the typical point of when it was he was included.

The icing on that cake, though, had been who it was calling him begging for help. He wasn't a petty or spiteful guy in the slightest, but hearing Gaius' voice through Cordelia's phone asking him where he was and if he could come pull him out of a tight spot was not anything he was interested in pursuing. It wasn't until Cordelia was mentioned, and it was explained that she was the one who needed help, not him, that he decided he needed to find them and take them back to the station, because they clearly were not where they'd agreed to meet back up.

When he'd shown up at the convenience store, open for some reason despite the weather and the holiday, he was greeted by a grim-faced employee who led him straight to the back office of the store. He hadn't even introduced himself or explained why he was there before this happened, but as he was being walked back there he realized that this man knew he was coming simply because no one else in their right mind would've been out at that moment, in those conditions. That was where he saw Cordelia almost lifeless, staring out into nothing with eyes that were glazed over, her hands gripped tightly in Gaius' but in the most non-romantic way possible. "We need to get her help, now," he said, bringing himself to his feet as the employee and Stahl both fully came into the room. "She's not going to last much longer like this, she got too cold out there."

"What happened to put you two here and not at Lon'qu's house like we agreed on?" Stahl asked, understanding the urgency but not understanding why it was how it was. "Are you going to explain that to me?"

"I'll do it once we're at the hospital, I'm sure Cordelia's life matters more than you getting a story out of me does." He was right, he could tell the story a million times over but in the end all Stahl cared about was making sure Cordelia was going to be okay, and so together (with the help of the store employee) they carefully picked her up and carried her out to the backseat of Stahl's car, laying her on the seat and haphazardly buckling her in for legality's sake, before taking the front seats for themselves and driving away, after Gaius thanked the employee many times over for letting them in and helping them as he did.

The ride was long and slow and reminded Stahl of the one he'd made the previous summer, but instead of driving down winding mountain roads that were covered in snow, he was driving through city streets he was super familiar with. "You know that if Chrom were to see this, he would be angry that she's laying down back there," he remarked, looking in his rearview mirror to see Cordelia's almost lifeless body. "Not because it's illegal, but because she's usually the last one to lay down on the job."

"This isn't the time for that kind of stuff," Gaius snapped, his voice tired and angry. "I've had to watch her slowly dying since we got kicked out of the other car, she's not going to make it with how slow you're going!"

"You want me to…break the laws we're trained to uphold, so that we can save a friend?" It was an absurd notion to Stahl, but looking back at Cordelia again he could understand why Gaius felt so strongly about it. "If the roads weren't so bad, I'd consider it, but I'm barely hanging onto the wheel as it is, I can't imagine going faster. As much as it sucks, we're going to have to stick to this slow and steady pace, and hope that everything ends up being fine."

For the rest of the ride, Gaius continued griping about how slow they were going, reaching into the back seat at times to make sure Cordelia still had a pulse and they weren't toting around a dead body. Once they were at the hospital they rushed her inside, the nurses having already been notified that they were on their way thanks to the men having between them the number to call in an emergency despite not being in an emergency vehicle of any kind. It was one of those perks of being a police officer that Stahl never thought he'd see have any use, and he hated that they had to use it that day, for someone as near and dear to his heart as Cordelia was.

It was after she was rushed into a room and Gaius was taken back with her, to make sure he wasn't suffering from anything caused by the cold that Stahl decided to call Chrom and let him know what was going on, giving him as much information as he could despite having limited information to work with. He didn't resent who was responsible for this, and for once he wasn't upset that she'd been saddled with spending time with Gaius, because if it hadn't been for him she might have actually died, and he tried to make all of that clear as he spoke with the man who'd sent them all out as he had. "I don't think Cordelia would want you to blame yourself for this," he said, sureness in his voice. "She would blame herself for it, somehow, and we'd all tell her it's okay. That's what I know. That's what we're going to believe right now, until she's fine."

The response he got from Chrom for that didn't matter, because it wasn't in agreement with what he'd just said and he wasn't going to let a dose of reality ruin his hopefulness. When that call ended, he spent a lot of time sitting by himself there at the hospital, wondering how things were going and if there was anything he could have done differently to prevent this from happening. Maybe if he hadn't been so oblivious for so long about what Cordelia wanted, or maybe if he hadn't gotten so jealous whenever Gaius was around, maybe then this could have never happened and she wouldn't have been admitted to the hospital on Christmas for being stuck out in the cold.

At some point Gaius came out from where they were holding him, looking exactly as he had when he was taken back. "They said it's a miracle I'm not a person-sicle like she was, with how cold and underdressed we were out there," he told Stahl as he took the seat next to him, slapping him on the leg as he sat. "I told them that the only miracle I want to hear is that she's perfectly fine, that shut them right up."

"You got discharged already?" Stahl asked in surprise, expecting that things would've taken much longer since this was the busiest hospital in Ylisstol most days. "They must have nothing else going on today, how lucky."

"More like, there wasn't anything wrong with me except my body temp being a bit cold. Threw me under a blanket for half an hour and I was good to go. Except I'm not going anywhere, we've got a Cordelia to wait for." Slapping Stahl's leg again, Gaius looked at him face-to-face, before he sighed. "Look, man, I'm sorry this happened to her. It's my fault, I wouldn't shut my mouth and it drove Lon'qu to the point of kicking us out. If she dies, I'm sure it'd only be right if I got punished for it."

Stahl squirmed at the idea of Cordelia not surviving this, but he wasn't going to let Gaius know how uncomfortable that idea made him. "She won't die and you won't be punished. You weren't the one who actively abandoned her in the snow, that was Lon'qu. He'll…I don't know, he'll get punished no matter how she turns out, but I don't know how Chrom's going to find it in himself to be impartial to his brother-in-law."

"That's why he's not going to punish him, he's going to punish me for it. Guy's always giving me a million second chances, now that I'm responsible for one of his officers being hurt or maybe killed he's going to stop doing that." Gaius started fidgeting, bringing his hand off Stahl's leg and instead tapping it on the armrest of the chair in between them. "It sucks that that's how it's going to be, but can't say I don't deserve it."

"You don't deserve to be punished for something you didn't do. You're not the one who decided to take a walk in the snow with Cordelia when she wasn't prepared for it, you had that forced upon you." He wasn't sure how many times he'd be able to repeat that fact, especially since it could be argued that he wasn't present for what had happened, he didn't know what had gone on, but Stahl had faith that he wasn't misunderstanding the situation and was defending the person who deserved it. That was an odd thought, that Gaius deserved defense for something, and he hoped this was going to be the only time that was the case.

They fell into silence for a while, the only sounds around them being the typical noises found within a hospital, but every so often, when they'd hear footsteps coming up towards them they'd both turn simultaneously to look for the source, hoping it was Cordelia coming to let them know she was okay. It never was, nor was it ever someone coming to tell them how she was doing. It was just everyday nurses and staff, walking by and going about their business, exactly as they should have been.

"Do you think anyone here recognizes us as officers?" Stahl asked in an attempt to fill the void their lack of conversation was causing. "I'm sure we've had to come here enough with criminals that someone's got to know who we are."

"Nah man, we're not that big of deals. Chrom, Robin, maybe even Frederick? They'd be recognized in a heartbeat, they've got famous faces and high-profile positions. Us? We're just the bottom of the officer barrel, nothing special about us." What Gaius was saying was striking a nerve inside of Stahl, pointing out a fact he'd already known about himself for a long time but had tried to push past for the sake of his sanity: he wasn't anything or anyone special, and the people around him were simply better than him.

He wasn't going to make it obvious that he felt that way, not to Gaius of all people, so he swallowed down all negative thoughts to say, "Yeah, makes sense. Wouldn't it be funny if one of them came in with us, then maybe we'd get special treatment while we wait around for Cordelia."

Almost like magic, his phone (which he was supposed to have silenced upon entering the hospital) started ringing, catching him by surprise. When he saw that it was Chrom calling him, he was quickly growing confused and concerned, about to start considering whether or not Gaius had just predicted the future by mentioning him moments before. "Take your call, I'll be right here when you get done," Gaius said with a smile, looking at Stahl's phone screen to see it was Chrom's number showing up. "Oh shit, you've got the chief calling you, that's definitely something you've got to take."

"I know, I know." Stahl was getting up so he could step out somewhere he wouldn't be disturbing anyone as he talked, and the moment he was walking away from Gaius he answered the call. "Hello? We don't know anything more about Cordelia yet, Gaius is fine though, he's out in the waiting area with me."

"That's good, but that's not why I've called you," Chrom replied, not even giving a greeting because Stahl had gone right into conversation. "I need you to swing by my house for me, there seems to have been an incident there and you are the only person I can trust to check up on it safely and effectively. Are you able to do that for me?"

"I mean, I am able to, but Cordelia…" Just the thought of abandoning his post there in the waiting room for longer than it took to take a call was making Stahl want to reject the request, but this was Chrom he was dealing with. Chrom, who had a number of children at his house at the moment that might have needed his help, who was unable to do anything for himself and needed his most flexible and reliable officer to do the job for him. "I can do it, do you know what kind of incident it's been?"

There was a pause on the other side of the line, before Chrom answered him. "I don't know, unfortunately, but I do know who it involves and I do know that you may need to transport children if you take this up. Small children."

"Your nephew?" Stahl asked, hesitant to suggest it but not knowing what else he could say. "I'm not sure I could do that, knowing that his dad's kind of the reason that Cordelia's in here right now. Can you ask him to do it?"

"It's not necessarily an issue about O'wain, that's why I'm tasking you with it. Remember earlier when you mentioned that our friends aren't home? Their daughter's at my house, for some reason I have yet to fully understand, and we have reason to believe that something happened with her." Hearing that made the feeling Stahl had experienced sitting in front of that darkened house not all that long beforehand cross his mind, the confusion turning to pain on behalf of the most-likely-unaware parents.

He didn't want to abandon Cordelia (and by extension Gaius), but at the same time this was directly related to two of his closest friends and he couldn't let them suffer in the dark. "I'll head right over, I don't have a carseat though so if I do need to bring her here I don't think I can do it."

"Don't worry about that, Lissa will be able to help you there in some way, I'm sure of it. You're taking this heavy weight off my shoulders, I was beginning to consider driving over there myself in my ill-prepared car, but if you're going to do this I know it'll be done right." It must have been really important if Chrom was ready to throw caution to the wind and go check on things, and it was at that point that Stahl realized he wasn't going to be able to back out of things at any cost. Which was fine, he was just invested enough to not want to back out anyway, but still. "Let me know once you're there, I have yet to speak to Lissa on the matter and would like to get the chance."

"Wait a second, if you haven't talked to your sister, how do you know this is happening? Are you sure you're not just trying to pull me away from making sure Cordelia's okay?" That was a giant red flag that he needed to get addressed before he went anywhere, not wanting to risk his life to check on lives that didn't need it, especially when a life that mattered to him was on the line.

The chuckle on Chrom's end of the call was breathy, almost as if he was forcing himself to laugh at Stahl's slip back into confusion. "I haven't spoken to her since before everything happened, but Maribelle has, and while she isn't a trustworthy source when she gets worked up, she typically has a reason for it. Do this for me, Cordelia will be waiting for you when you get back to her."

That was assurance enough to get him motivated, and after promising he would be right on it Stahl walked back over to where Gaius was still seated, watching his approach. "So what's the chief wanting from you? Making sure you haven't found your way into Cordelia's bed or something, huh?"

"No, he needs me to go check on a different situation he's heard about. You won't mind being left alone for a little bit, will you?" There was no other choice, really, but Stahl wanted to make it look like there was even a slight chance that Gaius could have come with him. When he shook his head in response, that was enough of an answer that it could be accepted and ran with. "Hey, thanks for understanding. If you happen to see her before I get back, let her know that…that I didn't want to leave her here with you, I wanted to be here waiting as well. She'll appreciate it, I think."

He was walking towards the doors to the parking garage when he heard Gaius finally process what he'd been asked to pass along, the loud "wait a second!" resonating through the rather empty hospital a lot louder than he was sure he'd intended. That wasn't his issue, even though he was sure that if something happened while he was gone the message wouldn't be shared as intended, but Stahl had no intentions of being gone so long that Cordelia would wake up and be receiving guests without him there. He was just going to go check on the situation at Chrom's house and come back by his lonesome, take that seat next to Gaius once more, and wait everything out.

That was what he'd convinced himself he was going to do for the duration of the ride over to the house across town, taking every stop and turn carefully to not endanger himself, thankful he was alone but wishing he hadn't had to leave where he was. But when he got out of the car and headed for the front door of the house, he could already hear what sounded like multiple children inside crying for some reason, which was never a good sign. He found the front door to be unlocked, but he didn't open it in case someone inside would think he was an intruder and attack him; his decision right then was to call Chrom as asked and have him give verbal permission to enter his home without waiting for someone to properly let him in.

Just to be safe, he kept Chrom on the line as he entered, the sound of crying getting louder the moment the door was opened. "Oh gods, what are _you_ doing here?" Lissa frantically asked, seeing Stahl walk in with a phone pressed against his face as she slowly took a step down the staircase, her arms dripping in blood as she carried her son down. "Who sent you? I-I can handle this all on my own, I hope you know!"

"I'm here to check on a situation," he replied, with Chrom in his ear telling him to hand her the phone so that he could hear everything for himself. "I can't do that, boss, she's got a kid in her arms and she's all bloodied, it'd just dirty up my phone."

"Boss? You've got Chrom on the phone with you?" If she hadn't already been pale as a ghost from what had happened, hearing that her brother was listening in on what was happening would have drained any remaining color from her face. "Someone told him, he knows, oh no now I'm going to be so dead once everything's okay…"

"Whoa, whoa, don't talk like that!" Despite hearing Chrom say that she wasn't far off from the truth, Stahl wasn't going to take everyone's negative perception of the situation as his own, and he hung up on Chrom to have two available hands for helping. "Look here, I'm just here to help you with whatever's happening, I'm not going to judge or cause any problems, I promise. We're friends, aren't we?"

Lissa was repeating what she'd previously said about being dead over everything, so talking directly to her wasn't going to work out. He spotted a pair of blue-haired heads poking their way out of the side room and waved for them to come towards him, knowing that those were Chrom's kids and that they would know what was happening. One of them approached him, the other hanging back, and once the younger boy was in front of him he posed the question of what had happened to him. "A cabinet upstairs got broken somehow and people got cut on the glass, I guess," Inigo explained, having not seen the incident for himself but having walked in on the aftermath. "Lucy's in the other room with a box of bandages, but it's hard when there's still glass in the cuts."

"How would she know that if—" Stahl cut himself off when he looked at who was in Lissa's arms again, his mind flashing back to being told that it had nothing to do with that child but rather a different, more important to him one. "—right. Well, I'm here to help out however I can, and if she's got cuts that need medical attention I can take her to the doctor to get her checked out."

"You can't take her anywhere, she's my responsibility and the only people taking her out of this house are Maribelle or her parents!" Having reached the bottom of the stairs, Lissa was standing next to Stahl, trying to push a loudly whining O'wain towards him. "But you can take my baby, he fell into the glass and tore his hand up way worse than a few bandages will fix. He needs you to take him with you, I trust you can do it."

"I can take him too, sure, but I need to check on Kjelle as well." He watched as Lissa cringed at the name as he said it, almost as if she didn't want to be reminded of who else it was that had been hurt. "It won't be too bad if I have to take her with me, I'm real close with her parents and they'd trust me with her, I know they would."

Something he'd said struck a nerve within Lissa, and she pulled O'wain back closer to her chest, trying to snuggle him into silence. "They'd trust you because you're not someone they both dislike and can't stand," she reminded him, "and they wouldn't try to press charges or something stupid like that if it were your fault that she was hurt. But it's my fault, I wasn't even supposed to be watching their baby, and I let her get hurt because I'm that spiteful or a person or something!" Every word had brought her closer to tears until she was sobbing with the last mouthful of words, her tears falling right onto the top of her son's head. "I can't let her go with you, you'll just get me in trouble."

"You trust me with your own child but not someone else's?"

"It's not that I don't trust you with her, it's that I don't trust that you won't get me in trouble for having her here with me." Little did Lissa know that he'd already started that chain of information finding its way to the proper recipients, even if he hadn't said anything with specifics when he had. "I've been trained on how to handle medical situations, I can handle her nicks and cuts once I take a look at her. O'wain's arm is far too cut for me to do anything, I know this, and I need you to help with it."

"No, I really can't just take him and call it good! I have to do what I was told and make sure she's okay as well. I'm sorry Lissa, but that's just how it is." Stahl was loyal and insistent to a fault, always wanting to do what he thought was best even if it was just barely enough to be considered doing anything at all. Even as Lissa was begging for him to change his mind, he was ignoring her, choosing to follow Inigo into the other room so that he should see what the rest of the injuries that had been sustained were.

Sitting on the floor in that room were all the other children under Lissa's care, some of them coming down from crying fits and sniffling as they watched him enter, others bandaging up their toes and feet from what he assumed was the same broken cabinet. "Look Lucy, Father actually sent someone to help us!" Inigo announced as they walked in, Lucina smiling in thanks up at the man following her brother. "And you thought he was just here to help Aunt Lissa out, so how about that!"

"I was a bit scared that she'd called for help for O'wain and only O'wain," Lucina admitted, not moving from her spot but turning her attention to the carseat she was rocking gently with one hand. "I…don't know how well I handled this, but I got her legs to stop bleeding everywhere, but there's still glass in them, I know there is. That can't be good for a baby."

Stahl came in front of the seat and bent down to take a closer look at who was in it, getting down on his knees when he found that squatting was keeping him too far away. "She looks miserable, if you don't mind me saying that. I don't care what Lissa says or wants, I need to take her back to the hospital with me."

"The hospital?" Lucina's repetition was done as she pulled her hand back from rocking the seat, Kjelle opening her eyes almost immediately and starting to whimper once more. "No, she can't be that hurt, even if she's little none of the cuts were that bad, really."

"Oh, I think you misunderstand me, let me explain what's going on." This was a room full of children, none of whom really needed to know the ins-and-outs of daily police station life, but their fathers were the three most important men on staff, so it was possible they'd heard stories before, and this wasn't even much of a story. "One of our officers is in the hospital right now, she got really messed up from the snow, and I'm going back to be with her once I'm done here, so it's not that I'm taking Kjelle there because she really needs it, I'm taking her because it's just where I'll be so why not let them look at her?"

Lucina thought on what she'd heard for a moment, before nodding. "Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I got scared you thought she was super hurt or something like that."

"He's not taking her anywhere!" Lissa called out, breathless, as she entered the room. "I'm not letting her leave this house unless it's with Maribelle or one of her parents, I already told him that! She'll be fine, she's been patched up, he needs to take O'wain and get him taken care of, that's that!"

Closing his eyes as he tried to come up with some solution to the problem that he was being faced with, Stahl re-opened them when he heard a scream come from the baby he was in front of, looking straight at Kjelle and seeing the pain she was in shining in her eyes. "I can take both, but I'm not taking just your son," he said to Lissa, standing up and turning to face her. "You're going to have to understand that I was called over here to check on her and I'm going to do that job before I do any others."

"And I'm supposed to let you do that? Look, I didn't want to watch her, I've wanted nothing to do with her since she got here yesterday, but I can't let someone who wasn't trusted with her care take her out in the snow!" Once again Lissa was trying to push O'wain towards him, trying to get him to take her son over the baby. "You need to take care of who I say you can take care of!"'

"I'm sorry, Lissa, but I…I don't think you were actually 'trusted' with her care." Talking back to her wasn't anything Stahl had wanted to do, but it was necessary to get her to shut up and actually listen to what it was he was saying. "Hear me out on this, if you let me take her with me I'll cover for you, I'll talk to everyone back at the station and the fact that she was here with you will stay secret. We'll pretend Maribelle found a different babysitter for her, we'll make sure your name never comes up, we'll keep you safe and away from any blame. This injury, we'll say the cold broke a window or something, I'm sure that can happen."

When she spoke again, Lissa's voice was softer in volume, making it harder for her to be heard over the crying happening in her arms. "And what if they don't keep it secret? I'd rather not be hated for something I didn't mean to have happen under my care."

"I'll make sure they don't hate you for it if they find out somehow, no one has any right to blame you for anything happening. Now will you please let me take care of this?" She was reluctant to let Stahl have his way but she ultimately conceded, although the concession was quickly followed with the realization that they didn't have the other part of the carseat needed to make it vehicle-ready, nor did they have one for O'wain to ride in (since his was in his father's vehicle and therefore not at the house).

It wasn't something that he ever liked having to do, but Stahl recognized that sometimes, laws could be bent if it meant doing the right thing in the end, and it was going to be another secret that was taken to the grave. All of it was, really, since he couldn't drive over to the hospital with two children unrestrained on his own, which meant that Lissa had to come with him—leaving the other six children there alone. He intended on bringing everyone back as soon as possible, and that was how they were able to convince the eldest children that it was fine to be alone for a bit, but once they'd trekked across town and gotten the kids admitted, he came to understand that there wasn't going to be a "soon as possible" in this situation, and he needed to make a decision about what to do with the rest of the children.

Taking them to the station to rejoin their parents, once again not in the most legal of manners, wasn't the optimal plan, but it was the only choice he had. It allowed for them to be somewhere with supervision while also giving him the chance to catch Chrom up to speed on everything that had happened face-to-face, as opposed to doing it over the phone. "So you promised my sister we would keep this all secret, but do you realize how bad of an idea that is?" he asked, once Stahl had given him the full story and he was able to reflect on it. "The moment someone catches on to the fact that we're lying…"

"It was the only way I could get her to let me do anything, I know it's a bad idea but it needed to be done. You didn't hear the crying, Chrom. Those kids were suffering and they needed me to step in and help them." Already he was backing out of the conversation, this secondary problem all solved, which meant that he could go back to the first thing that he'd been pulled into. "If you don't want to do it, that's fine and I respect that, but I don't want your sister getting in trouble for doing what she thought was right."

"Stahl, where do you think you're going so soon? You just got back, aren't you going to check in with everyone?" Chrom was watching him shuffle backwards, heading right back to the door he'd entered the station from. "I'm sure there are several parents here who would love to tell you that you've partially saved their Christmas by bringing their children here for them, after all hope was lost."

"You know, I'd love to check in with everyone, but there's someone else I need to check in on first. Who knows, maybe Cordelia will be awake once I'm back!" There was cheer in his voice as he made the statement, that being the one thing he was currently hoping for. "I'll let you know how she's doing when I see her, and maybe I'll get your sister to let you know how _she's_ doing if I run into her while I'm there."

Chrom let him get most of the way towards the door before asking one final question, one that stopped Stahl where he stood: "And what about Kjelle, hm? You aren't going to continue leaving her in Lissa's care now that you've gotten involved, are you?"

"No, I think I'm going to do what's best for everyone and keep her under my care until I reunite her with her parents. I'm sure they'd appreciate knowing that I ended up with her more than anyone else," he replied, after giving it some deep thought. "Which reminds me, I've got to go check on her too! There's so much to do, and I can't do any of it sticking around here!"

He was out of the station immediately after that, leaving Chrom shaking his head in his wake. "Well, if there's one thing I can always count on Stahl for, it's getting things done, no matter the circumstances…"

* * *

The fractured half of the conversation she'd had haunted Sully for the whole day, her mind unable to push past it as doing so would mean she'd accepted that her daughter was somewhere unknown and she wasn't going to do that, no matter what. "We need to go back, right now," she said hours later, interrupting whatever the family they were with was doing to jump to her feet and start for the door. "We can handle the roads, if Stahl's driving around Ylisstol, that means we can drive back."

"No, it really doesn't," Panne countered, also getting to her feet so that she could follow her to the door, which was opened to reveal that the wind was still kicking up snow outside. "You two will get lost or die out in this storm, even if it's dying down it's still something you do not want to mess with. Rejoin us, wherever she is she's being cared for and you'll be thankful for it when you get home tomorrow."

"I can't wait until tomorrow, there's no way we can figure out where she is right now! Why the hell would I be content with sitting around believing in the fake story that she's being cared for? She was abandoned for the sake of a party!" There was genuine anger in Sully's voice, but looking outside at the blowing snow told her that there was truth to Panne's words and that she needed to stay where she was for the moment.

"We'll leave as soon as possible, I'm promisin' ya that," Vaike told her once she rejoined everyone, although she didn't take her seat once more and instead stood behind him, forcing him to tilt his head back to look up at her. "I don't like knowin' that we don't know where she is, but we've gotta believe that we trust the right people, yeah?"

From his perspective, he could see all the emotions cross his wife's face as she worked through them, from scrunching up her nose and squinting her eyes to slowly relaxing until she shrugged. "I…don't think we trusted the right people, which is awfully hilarious because everyone else can trust them and not a damn thing happens! We trust them and _this_ happens! Just our luck, huh?"

"To be fair, anythin' happenin' would've been a bad time with all this. Not like any 'a them would've driven out here like we had, and not like any 'a them think t'be nice t'anyone else other than themselves and their close friends." Pausing as he thought about what he'd just said meant, Vaike added, "Which, uh, looks like we don't exactly fit that with the people y'decided t'trust this time, which makes sense 'cause—"

"Do us all a favor and don't say it." She had been mentally bracing herself for where he was going with his point, but at the last moment Sully had decided she didn't want to hear it after all. She didn't want to hear the dragging of someone she'd thought had her back after all the things they'd been through together with each other, and she didn't want to hear the justification of why that was. There were a lot of people who could've been blamed in that moment, but she wasn't going to push all that blame onto someone else until she knew the full story, the whole situation; right now she knew that Maribelle had betrayed her and chosen herself over her duty, but there was no proof that she'd done anything spiteful or stupid in her betrayal.

"When morning comes, we'll get you two on your way without issue," Panne said, interrupting the train of thought and the conversation as a whole. "Just focus on that, you have a set time you will be leaving and returning home to fix everything being gone has broken. Isn't that what you want?"

It was what they both wanted, but only one of them was going to agree with it outright. The other, looking at the family that had graciously taken them in, gave a shake of his head. "I'unno, bein' here with all of ya hasn't been the worst, it's been kinda nice t'not haveta worry 'bout work or any 'a the other people back home. The power bein' out's been a bummer, but lemme tell ya, if we had Kjelle here with us this woulda been the best way t'spend the holidays."

"I'm flattered to hear you say that, and know that if you want to ever come back out here for a holiday season we would gladly open our doors for you." The three older kids all echoed their mother's words, all in agreement that having guests to spend the time with was something they enjoyed, but there were a couple of dissenters to the positive message. When Panne saw that her husband looked unhappy with the offer, she tilted her head towards him, asking, "What, do you take issue with what I've said? They've done so much for me while I've been working in their place that it's only fair we open our doors to them again."

If he was going to try to come up with a rebuttal, he wasn't finding much success in it, as every time Donny opened his mouth to say something he'd close it immediately, only for the cycle to repeat itself. After a few times of him doing this, Panne couldn't help but give a chuckle at his behavior and he learned then that he had lost the battle, anything he could possibly say being irrelevant because he'd made her laugh.

"I think I know what he might've been going for," Sully said as she looked at Donny and tried to get a read on his facial expression, something that was difficult as he was starting to crack up as well. "This time of year should be a 'family at home' thing, not a 'let's have friend time somewhere' thing, and it's not like there's a lot of room for all of us in this damn house, anyway. If we're going to do the friend holiday, we're doing it somewhere bigger."

"That's a fair point to make, we're rather crowded in here right now and adding Kjelle would only make it worse. However," Panne raised a finger as she presented her new point, "I would assume that the only reason we've managed to stay comfortably warm in here without power every time it goes out has been due to how many bodies we have in the house. Adding more people means making it warmer, and I would never complain about the house being too warm in a winter storm." She might have been laughing before that, but now she had everyone else starting to laugh as well, thinking about how silly of an idea that was.

It wasn't enough to make people forget about the negative things they'd heard about, but it was something to help them temporarily move past it. The day dragged on with several more flare-ups of the strong desire to get home and set things straight, but after the sun had set and the house had darkened to the point that candlelight was the only effective way to see, there was nothing left to distract from the reality of what might have been waiting for them back in Ylisstol. Even as the adults held a long conversation after the children had gone off to bed, they kept slipping back to discussing what could have happened in the not-even two days that they'd been gone, although it wasn't just in regards to Kjelle, as they knew the storm had hit town hard and people were most likely stranded in difficult places.

Even still, the conversation mostly tracked back to where in the world the baby could have ended up if she wasn't still under Maribelle's watch, to the point that after some time, there was nothing they could talk about aside from that. "It's clear that you want to get out of here as soon as possible," Panne said with a knowing smile, made ominous in the candlelight, "so perhaps we could all head off for the night now? That way, when morning comes we can get you on your way with little delay."

"That sounds perfect, honestly." Already in her head Sully was plotting out exactly how she was going to approach Maribelle once they were back in town, demanding answers and not resting until she'd gotten a full explanation and apology for what she'd done. "Let's just get some sleep before we can finally leave and get out of this place."

"You sound as if you haven't enjoyed your time here." Her flat delivery of the line showed that Panne was joking as she said it, knowing that the extended visit hadn't been something intentional. "Was it something we did wrong? Our children were on their best behavior the entire time, should we punish them for ruining your experience here on the farm?"

"C'mon now, y'know she just wants t'get back home," Vaike replied, not catching that Panne was cracking a joke. "It's nothin' personal about any of ya, don't worry." His obliviousness earned a round of laughter, something that was a perfect send-off for the evening, and after they'd turned into their room Vaike voiced his confusion about why he'd gotten laughter in response to what he'd said.

Rather than reply to his question, Sully was thinking about getting home and setting everything straight that she could, but she looked at him and smiled. "I think they were just playing around with you," she said, laying down in the small bed she'd slept in the night before and sighing. "This visit out here would've been so much better if it hadn't happened like this, you know. I bet we would've enjoyed ourselves if we hadn't been trapped."

"I don't know what you're talkin' about, I enjoyed myself a whole lot. Me and Donny had all sorts 'a conversations 'bout things I wouldn't've expected from the guy. And those kids? Man, I'd be down for watchin' them sometime if we needed to." Settling down in his bed as well, Vaike yawned as he got under the blankets. "They're good kids, Sully. I like 'em."

"That's great, glad you like them. We'll make sure to visit them again sometime, _with_ Kjelle with us so that none of this happens again!" She grumbled some additional things under her breath for a few minutes, her voice never raising to loud enough to be heard in the other bed. After she'd quieted down, the sounds of the stillness of night filling the room, he'd started to assume she'd fallen asleep, but then he heard her ask as softly as she possibly could, given her typically strong voice: "Hey, what time do you think it is right now?"

He blinked a couple of times to make sure he was processing her question right, but due to there being no power and no reliable way to check the time where they were he wasn't sure how to answer. "Er, probably after midnight at this point, which means we really should get t'sleepin' before it's too much later. Early in the mornin', isn't that what Panne said?"

"After midnight, huh? Guess that means it's not Christmas anymore." It was all she responded with, and he wasn't sure how he was supposed to reply other than agreeing with her and focusing on trying to sleep. However, that plan was thwarted when she spoke once more. "You…do remember what today is, don't you?"

He honestly couldn't say that he did, with everything that had happened in the past two days. It felt like it might've been important, but as far as he was concerned, getting home and back to real life was what mattered most; when he never responded to her follow-up comment she accepted that he wasn't going to play along and tried winding her mind down just enough to fall asleep herself.

As they were preparing themselves for the second night on the farm, everyone trapped in the station in Ylisstol was still wide awake, readying themselves for a long night of getting everyone out of there as safely as possible. Over the course of the day, the roads had cleared up just enough that some people deemed them passable for driving, while others were still hesitant to venture out on their own. The solution to that came in the form of Stahl, who had spent most of the day driving back and forth between the station and the hospital anyway to relay messages and transport people as needed.

It had been on one of the last trips back from the hospital that he'd thought to offer up the idea of taking anyone who didn't feel like driving home for them, and when he'd pulled into the station's parking lot to see several officers cleaning cars off he was surprised to see they'd had the idea to go home as well. "You know the roads aren't that bad now, right?" he asked upon getting out of his car, Gaius exiting from the passenger side at the same time. "Like, there are actual people out again! It's weird seeing other headlights out on the streets tonight, after how bad it was this morning."

"We were made aware of it when Gregor left for a few minutes to retrieve his, ahem, wrecked vehicle," Miriel replied, crossing her arms in front of her and attempting not to make her teeth chattering too obvious of a sound. "That was why I was asked to come out, to inspect the damage from that, when—"

"We're gonna try getting everyone home!" Nowi cried out, cutting her off. "Ricken and I are going to get every car free of snow so that everyone gets to spend tonight at home!"

"—when the two of them followed me out to do their own thing." Sighing as she disliked being cut off, Miriel glared at Nowi over her glasses before looking back to the two men who'd just joined them. "At any rate, it is good to see you have rejoined us. Shall we go inside to let everyone know your news of there being others out and about?"

"I'll go in and do it." Stahl took a couple steps towards the door, before stopping and looking back at Miriel, who was staring at him, body shivering. "Oh, you know what, you can come too! There's a lot of people to tell and the more of us talking, the better, right?"

She nodded, coming closer to him before walking briskly past him. "You are completely correct on that. Hurry now, we don't want to keep everyone up and out too late into the night, the roads could possibly ice over and cause more of a nightmare than this has been up to this point."

The two of them rushed inside, Gaius a couple steps behind them (and Nowi and Ricken a few steps behind him, not wanting to stay out in the cold if it was just the two of them out there). Chrom was waiting near the door, surprised to see the two from the hospital coming inside together. "I was expecting Stahl, not both of you," he remarked, holding a hand out to greet Gaius with. "Figured one of you would be keeping watch overnight to make sure she was okay. What happened?"

"She's going to stay all night and probably for another day or two, depending on how much of her hands they can save," Gaius answered, while Stahl and Miriel set off to inform everyone else at the station of the new plan. "You should've seen them for yourself, her fingers were starting to darken, it was honestly horrifying. I've seen some things before but that wasn't anything I could've imagined." Chrom seemed interested in what he was hearing, but he repeated the part where he hadn't expected to see both men come inside, allowing Gaius to come up with an answer for why that had happened. "Yeah, they wouldn't let us stay overnight with her because neither of us are on her papers, you know? They didn't want her getting angry that they'd let us stay."

"A very Cordelia thing to do, I must admit. We'll have to swing by in the morning to check on her, this whole situation's been a disaster and I wish I could get some explanation for how it happened." There was a chance for Gaius to throw the culprit under the bus for what he'd done, but Chrom silenced it with a zipped-lip motion. "No, none of that, I'm aware it was Lon'qu abandoning the two of you that caused it, but as long as he refuses to answer our calls there's not much that can be done."

"But something is gonna get done when it can?" Gaius asked, crossing his fingers in hopes that he'd get a positive answer and that the reason behind the suffering of someone dear to him would face justice for their actions. Chrom shrugged, however, dashing those hopes as quickly as he'd raised them. "Come on, really? He abandoned us in the freezing cold! She could've died because of him!"

Nodding in understanding, Chrom's words contrasted with his clear acceptance that something needed to be done. "I'm sure Lon'qu had a reason for what he did, even if what he did was wrong. I will have to speak to him about it before I decide anything, but I have a feeling that I won't be the first to speak to him about anything, if at all."

"You'll let your _sister_ talk to him first?"

"They're married, unfortunately there's nothing I can do to stop her from discussing it with him. Of course, that happening requires him actually answering her calls, which he hasn't, but we'll see." There was a moment where Chrom was looking wistfully past Gaius, something that he felt was odd, but then he shook his head and resumed partaking in the current conversation. "Anyway, judging by how Miriel came in with you and Stahl, I'm assuming there's something that's being planned. Want to clue me in?"

Before Gaius had the chance to explain, Nowi called out from just inside the doorway that they were still going to try to get everyone home, with Ricken sighing at how she'd interrupted someone else trying to talk about it again. Chrom seemed to accept them as a source, though, and moved on to asking the two of them about what they'd seen while they were outside, which allowed for Gaius to properly come into the station. He looked at the nearest clock, seeing the hands just past midnight, and he groaned, putting his hands to his face and sliding them down. He was technically supposed to be on shift right then, he couldn't help more with the quest to get everyone home, and if anything happened to them while they were out it was his responsibility.

In the time it took for him to mentally prepare himself for doing the job of protecting the city overnight, everyone had been rounded up and informed of the plan, and there were just as many people hesitant to leave as there were ones ready to brave the roads. The kids were all half-awake at best, parents' arms holding or wrapped around their little ones, while chatter was erupting through the adults about how there was a lot of danger in what they were going to do, but as long as they played it safe everyone would be okay.

As Gaius stood by watching, his ear out for any emergency calls in the sleepy town, the group dwindled down, first everyone who was driving themselves going out and getting in their cars, then the people who wanted someone capable of driving to take them home. After the first round of people had been taken home, Stahl came into the station not just to get the next group, but to talk to Gaius. "I'm glad we got to know each other a bit better through all of what happened," he said, sounding sincere with every word. "It sucked, and Cordelia got hurt because of it, but we had each other there to get us through it."

"We sure did," he replied, smiling at him. "And now you're being the big-shot cool guy and I'm stuck watching the station on waiting room-chair sleep. What a turn of events."

"I'd say the biggest turn of events is that I'm gonna be stuck babysitting overnight for the first time in my life, but…keeping things secret, you know?" Stahl laughed, scratching at the base of his neck. "Anyway, I'll come check by one last time before I get everyone home, don't do anything bad while I'm gone."

He shot Stahl a couple half-hearted finger guns. "You got it, don't do anything dumb while you're out driving." That earned another laugh and he left, leaving Gaius to observing the station as it continued emptying out. The people that were still there, they were talking about what they could do to pass the time, or what had gone wrong over the past two days, or simply about what they'd do once they were home. He didn't have any answers for them, but he would've loved for any of them to acknowledge that he was there, that he had been a big part of some of what had happened, that he wasn't going home even though the rest of them were.

It was a lot of suffering, being the last officer left at the station. But at least he wasn't the one who'd abandoned people in the snow, or the one who'd been hurt by being abandoned. He wasn't the one who'd flaked on babysitting, or the one who'd allowed their new charge to be injured. He didn't have a glass mess or a social mess to clean up once morning came. He'd just stuck to his guns, kept being himself, and come out of it for the better. Sometimes that was just how life worked out, and he figured he'd have to tell Stahl about that realization at some point after everything was finally over. _Everything_. Not just getting people from the station home.

* * *

Morning's light brought with it the revelation that the blizzard had finally wound down, the bright blue sky overhead illuminating the high-piled snow drifts. Power was still out inside the house, which was easily ignored thanks to how strong the sunshine was outdoors; once everyone was awake two adults and one child went outside to dig the working vehicle out of the snow, while everyone else stayed inside and waited.

"You two will have to drive carefully, I'm certain the highway has yet to be plowed and there may be obscured cars along the road," Panne cautioned, sitting on the floor with Kitte laid out in front of her. "You'll get home safely and be reunited with your daughter in a matter of hours, just play it safe."

"Reunited with her, as long as wherever Maribelle abandoned her didn't end up with her dead," Sully grumbled in response, her eyes focused on the squirming child on the floor rather than the woman she was speaking with. Even a night of attempted sleep hadn't been enough to shake her mind of all the possibilities of what could have gone wrong. "We should have just brought her here, she'd have loved the attention your kids would've given her."

Shaking her head, Panne said, "No, bringing her here would have caused more issues than the current situation did. You made the right choice to leave her at home, but the person you trusted with her life was unable to be properly trusted."

"Oh, don't worry, Maribelle won't be seeing her again for a _long_ time, if ever. None of them will, they'll find that out soon enough." This was a conversation between two fiercely-protective mothers, and with every sentence it was sounding more heated—something that could have elevated to an argument if they weren't talking about the most important thing in their lives. "Say, isn't that why you live out on this farm? To keep your kids safe from people like that?"

"No, we live out here because this is Donnel's family's farm, but I would be lying if I didn't say your experience is a solid reason for why we would never move into a larger town." Panne smiled, a laugh on the tip of her tongue, but she was stopped by two of her other children, both of them flopping onto her back and wrapping her up in their arms. "Goodness, what do you two want?"

"Mom, we've gotta move into town sometime!" Sil squeaked, Bud nodding along with her. "That way we're closer to miss Sully and Kjelle and the _horses_!"

"We have horses around here," Panne reminded her children, knocking them off her back so that they could scramble to in front of her to watch as she talked. "Of course, the horses around here aren't meant for recreational riding like the ones at the camp are. And the camp is so secluded, it's a shame that it isn't actually yours, hm, Sully?"

That question was hard to answer, because she wanted to say that it was hers in all but paperwork, but after what had happened the last time she was up there she wasn't sure anymore. "Living out in the mountains isolated like that would be nice," she admitted. "But asking the owners to let us move in isn't the issue, it's—"

"The fact that you haven't ridden a horse since the accident?"

"—no, actually. It's that moving up there is asking far too much of the people we work with, since if we did it we wouldn't be working at that station again anymore." This was the first time that Sully had really considered the logistics of making that summer retreat a permanent home, but it wasn't the first time she'd thought about the impact of them both leaving the station. "Not like it really matters what I think, it's not my decision to make alone, and Vaike isn't here to help discuss it."

"I don't think you should include consideration for them in your decision. Do what's best for you and your family, no one will fault you in the end, especially after this." It was while Panne was speaking that the three people outside came back in, covered in snow but loudly talking about how everything looked so peaceful outside. "I believe it might be time for you to go now, am I correct in that assumption?"

"Sure are, we got it all cleared off! Can't believe that we're gonna get t'borrow your car from ya while you fix ours up, but it beats gettin' stuck here longer I suppose!" As Vaike laughed and the two women got to their feet to head over to the front door, the lone child that had gone outside disappeared for a moment, coming back to the group with a familiar blanket in his hands. He wrapped it around himself, before running right in the middle of everyone, much to his mother's dismay and everyone else's confusion.

"Yarne, blanket off and back into your room right this moment," Panne sternly said, looking at the boy and watching him shake his head at her demand. "What was that? Would you care to explain yourself?"

"I'm not going to take it off until I know they're home safe," he answered, pulling the blanket tighter to himself. "It's a lucky blanket, it got me through when bad stuff happened before and it'll make sure nothing bad happens again! And when I see miss Sully after this, I'm gonna give it to her and she's going to have the lucky blanket for herself!" Kids and their superstitions were weird, but Panne could tell that this was something that Yarne really felt he needed to do, so she didn't push against him any longer.

Goodbyes were exchanged and wishes of safe travels were given, and up until they were out on the road headed home it almost didn't feel like they were really leaving the farm at all. "I'm glad that we got stuck there, of all places. Could've been much worse if the truck'd broken out on the road, not in their driveway." Vaike was the one behind the wheel, while Sully was fiddling with charger cables she'd yanked from their truck, so that she could charge her phone and see everything she'd missed. "In a few days, all this'll be like it never happened and we can just go back t'livin' our normal old lives, yeah?"

"Something tells me that won't be the case, but go on," she replied, unsure of how to bring up what she'd discussed with Panne. That changed once her phone had come back to life and was flooded with messages of what had gone on in their two-day absence, in specific something about their daughter being injured in what seemed to be a freak accident. "I…yeah, no, it won't be 'normal' life living after all this. Whoever was watching her because Maribelle couldn't do her damn job let her get hurt and now Stahl's got her, I guess? They're just passing her around like she's a toy, Vaike! We can't let them do this to us or to her. Her life matters, damn it!"

"What d'ya think we should do about that? I mean, it's not like we could just skip town and forget about all 'a them…" The way he suggested that, coupled with a quick turn to look at her with a wink, showed that he'd been considering the same outcome she had been tossing around, even without a proper discussion of it. "I'm just sayin', you've got a hookup somewhere far away from them and I know ya well enough t'know that if ya really wanted to, you'd make it happen."

"Hell yeah I'll make it happen. No one gets to hurt _my_ baby without paying for it." There was still so much to resolve and set straight with the events of the Christmas Eve storm that threw everyone's lives into disarray, but one thing was completely certain: the fates of the two children injured due to wild circumstances would be separated just as their parents wished for it to happen. There wasn't any chance of the secret of Lissa's involvement actually staying secret, and it was known as early as that night that she'd been the one indirectly responsible for the jagged glass cuts on the backs of Kjelle's legs, which tossed aside any chances of there being some kind of forgiveness for what had happened before.

There was going to be a Ylisse-born, Ylisse-raised Feroxi boy living in contrast to a Ferox-born, Ferox-raised Ylissean girl for as long as their parents could force it to happen, as sure as the snow fell in the city every fifth winter.

* * *

 **A/N: this took me months to finish and I'm so sorry? but hey look references to stories I've written before and ones I've yet to post. and is that a sequel hook? (hint: it might be)**


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